Shell Description
The shell of the knobbed whelk is dextral, meaning that it is right-handed. If the shell is held in front of the viewer, with the spiral end up and the opening facing the viewer, the opening will be on the right side. The shell is thick and strong and has six clockwise coils. The surface is sculpted with fine striations and there is a ring of knob-like projections protruding from the widest part of the coil. The color is ivory or pale gray and the large aperture (the inside of the opening) is orange. The canal inside is wide and the entrance can be closed by a horny oval operculum.
Read more about this topic: Knobbed Whelk
Famous quotes containing the words shell and/or description:
“How then can we account for the persistence of the myth that inside the empty nest lives a shattered and depressed shell of a woman—a woman in constant pain because her children no longer live under her roof? Is it possible that a notion so pervasive is, in fact, just a myth?”
—Lillian Breslow Rubin (20th century)
“As they are not seen on their way down the streams, it is thought by fishermen that they never return, but waste away and die, clinging to rocks and stumps of trees for an indefinite period; a tragic feature in the scenery of the river bottoms worthy to be remembered with Shakespeare’s description of the sea-floor.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)