The first question Barbara asked is still hanging out there.   "What was
Stevenson's involvement with shells?"   Was Robert Louis Stevenson a shell
collector?   Does anyone know?   His words, which COA has for years adopted
as a sort of informal motto, are in evidence on nearly every page of COA's
website, Conch-Net <http://coa.acnatsci.org/conchnet/>, and they used to be
featured on our new member application form.
 
Former COA membership chairman Bobbie Houchin went to great lengths to
establish the correct wording of the quote before having the forms printed,
but I don't think she found the quote anywhere herself;  rather, I think
someone verified the wording for her. And so I have never known the source
of Stevenson's quote. Gary Rosenberg?  Do you have the answer in that vast
collection of literary shell-mentions you maintain?  And does anyone know
why Stevenson spoke so passionately about shell collecting?  (Stevenson,
thou shouldst be living at this hour. Conch-L hath need of thee...."
 
Stevenson's words:
 
 
"It is perhaps a more fortunate destiny to have a taste for collecting
shells than to be born a millionaire."
                                -- Robert Louis Stevenson
 
Lynn Scheu
Louisville, KY
[log in to unmask]
 
 
>Glenn Burghardt wrote,
>"I have read that R.W. Griswold stated in the International  monthly
>magazine, Oct. 1850, that Edgar Allan Poe's book "The Conchologist's First
>Book..." , 1840, is a copy,  nearly verbatim, of the text-book of
>conchology by Captain Thomas Brown printed in Glasgow in 1833.
>   Interesting, it also stated that this title holds the distinction of
>being the only work published by Poe that went to a second printing during
>his lifetime."
>
>Always steal from the best, that's what I say.
>
>I've seen the book--a small manual--and I don't think that anyone would
>recognize it as a work by Poe without seeing the title page.
>
>Andrew K. Rindsberg
>Geological Survey of Alabama
>
>