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nydus/On Growth and FormPublic
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Table of Contents

CHAPTER XI THE LOGARITHMIC SPIRAL

shell as made up of an ensemble of spiral lines in space, each spiral having been {526} traced out by the gradual growth and revolution of a radius vector from the pole to a given point of the generating curve.

Both systems of lines, the generating spirals (as these latter may be called), and the closed generating curves corôÙreôÙsponôÙding to successive margins or lips of the shell, may be easily traced in a great variety of cases. Thus, for example, in Dolium, Eburnea, and a host of others, the generating spirals are beautifully marked out

Two side-by-side black-and-white photographs of marine snail shells, labeled 1 and 2, illustrating variations in shell form.

by ridges, tubercles or bands of colour. In Trophon, Scalaria, and (among countless others) in the Ammonites, it is the successive generating curves which more conspicuously leave their impress on the shell. And in not a few cases, as in Harpa, Dolium perdix, etc., both alike are conspicuous, ridges and colour-bands intersecting one another in a beautiful isogonal system. {527}

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