conchology

The study of molluscs and their shells.

"Thank goodness, I am not a child," said Lady Mandeville, turning over a collection of those juvenile tomes, which are to make the rising generation so much wiser than their grandfathers or grandmothers—catechisms of conchology, geology, mathematical questions for infants, geography, astronomy; "the child may be 'father to the man;' but the said father must have had some trouble with his offspring."

The least dreadful among the essays stacked and waiting to be corrected would be that of young Master Jefferson Davis, who when imprisoned by Andrew Johnson in 1866 will ask his physician at Fortress Monroe to procure a few volumes of "conchology, geology, or botany," he desiring to commune with the interests of more innocent days.

The hobby of shell collecting.