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lors; to dapple; to streak; as, to variegate a floor with marble of different colors. The shells are filled with a white spar, which variegates and adds to the beauty of the stone. Woodward.

e of the prominent ridges or ribs extending across each of the whorls of certain univalve shells.

A genus including several species of large marine gastropods having massive pyriform shells, with conspicuous folds on the columella.

An extensive tribe of bivalve mollusks of which the genus Venus is the type. The shells are usually oval, or somewhat heartshaped, with a conspicuous lunule. See Venus.

out on one side or unequally; bellied; ventricular; as, a ventricose corolla. Ventricose shell. (Zoöl.) (a) A spiral shell having the body whorls rounded or swollen in the middle. (b) A bivalve shell in which the valves are strongly convex.

Any one of numerous species of marine bivalve shells of the genus Venus or family Veneridæ. Many of these shells are large, and ornamented with beautiful frills; others are smooth, glossy, and handsomely colored. Some of the larger species, as the round clam, or quahog, are valued for food. Venus's basin (Bot.), the wi…

marine gastropods belonging to Vermetus and allied genera, of the family Vermetidæ. Their shells are regularly spiral when young, but later in life the whorls become separate, and the shell is often irregularly bent and contorted like a worm tube.

rl or whorls like the rays of a wheel; as, verticillate leaves of a plant; a verticillate shell.

f small land snails belonging to the genus Vertigo, having an elongated or conical spiral shell and usually teeth in the aperture.

ery; vesicular; vesiculate; composed of vesicles; covered with vesicles; as, a vesiculose shell.

inclining to red; bluish purple; having a color produced by red and blue combined. Violet shell (Zoöl.), any species of Ianthina; -- called also violet snail. See Lanthina. -- Violet wood, a name given to several kinds of hard purplish or reddish woods, as king wood, myall wood, and the wood of the Andira violacea, a…

Having the power of seeing visions; inspired; also, seen in visions. [R.] Shelley.

A genus of terrestrial gastropods, having transparent, very thin, and delicate shells, -- whence the name.

lly do; -- opposed to oviparous. Viviparous fish. (Zoöl.) See Embiotocoid. -- Viviparous shell (Zoöl.), any one of numerous species of operculated fresh-water gastropods belonging to Viviparus, Melantho, and allied genera. Their young, when born, have a well-developed spiral shell.

A spiral turn, as in certain shells.

A whorl of a spiral shell.

Beads made of shells, used by the North American Indians as money, and also wrought into belts, etc., as an ornament. Round his waist his belt of wampum. Longfellow. Girded with his wampum braid. Whittier.

Of the nature of warts; as, a warty excrescence. Warty egg (Zoöl.), a marine univalve shell (Ovulum verrucosum), having the surface covered with wartlike elevations.

An American fresh-water mussel (Quadrula pustulosa). Its shell is used in making buttons.

or watering flowers, paths, etc. (b) (Zoöl.) Any one of several species of marine bivalve shells of the genus Aspergillum, or Brechites. The valves are small, and consolidated with the capacious calcareous tube which incases the entire animal. The tube is closed at the anterior end by a convex disk perforated by numero…