between the two species last named-species which certainly had nothing to do with their production.[1]
The genera Tadorna and Casarca, as shown by the tracheal characters and coloration, are most nearly related to Chenalopex, containing the bird so well known as the Egyptian goose, C. aegyptiaca, and an allied species, C. jubata, from South America. For the same reason the genus Plectropterus, composed of the spur-winged geese of Africa, and perhaps the Australian Anseranas and the Indian and Ethiopian Sarcidiornis, also appear to belong to the same group, which should be reckoned rather to the Anatine than to the Anserine section of the Anatidae. (A. N.)
SHELDON, CHARLES MONROE (1857–), American Congregational clergyman, was born in Wellsville, New York, on the 26th of February, 1857. Graduating at Brown University in 1883 and at Andover Theological Seminary in 1886, he was pastor of a church at Waterbury, Vermont, in 1886–1888, and in 1889 became pastor of the Central Congregational Church of Topeka, Kansas. He is well known as the author of a number of widely read books of fiction, which at the same time inculcate an uncompromising obedience to the precepts of the Gospel in everyday life. Of these, In His Steps (1896), though not the earliest, is perhaps the best, and it is this one which first brought him into prominence.
SHELDON, GILBERT (1598–1677), archbishop of Canterbury, was born at Stanton in the parish of Ellastone, Staffordshire, and educated at Oxford. He was ordained in 1622 and was appointed chaplain to Thomas Lord Coventry (1578–1640). Four years later he was elected warden of All Souls’ College, Oxford. During the years 1632–1639 he received the livings of Hackney (1633); Oddington, Oxfordshire; Ickford, Buckinghamshire (1636); and Newington, Oxfordshire; besides being a prebendary of Gloucester from 1632. In 1638 he was on a commission appointed to visit Merton College, Oxford. He was intimate with the Royalist leaders, participated in the negotiations for the Uxbridge treaty of 1644, and collected funds for Charles II. in exile. In 1648 he was ejected from All Souls’ by order of parliament, and imprisoned for some months, but he regained the wardenship in 1659. In 1660 he became bishop of London and master of the Savoy, and the Savoy Conference was held at his lodgings. He was consecrated archbishop of Canterbury in 1663. He was greatly interested in the welfare of Oxford University, of which he became chancellor in 1667, succeeding Clarendon (1609–1674). The Sheldonian theatre at Oxford was built and endowed at his expense.
SHELL (O. Eng. scell, scyll, cf. Du. schel, shell, Goth. skalja, tile; the word means originally a thin flake, cf. Swed. skalja, to peel off; it is allied to "scale" and "skill," from a root meaning to cleave, divide, separate), the hard outside natural covering of anything, as of some fruits and seeds; more particularly, the conch (q.v.) or integument which acts as a defence for the bodies of various animals (see Mollusca, Gastropoda, Malacostraca, &c.), the test, crust or carapace; also the outer covering of an egg. The word is also used of many objects resembling the natural shell in use or shape, and especially of a hollow projectile filled with explosives (see Ammunition, § Shell, and Ordnance).
See also Shell-heaps, Shell-money.
SHELLEY, MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT (1797–1851), English writer, only daughter of William Godwin and his wife Mary Wollstonecraft, and second wife of the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, was born in London on the 30th of August 1797. For the history of her girlhood and of her married life see Godwin, William, and Shelley, P. B.. When she was in Switzerland with Shelley and Byron in 1816 a proposal was made that various members of the party should write a romance or tale dealing with the supernatural. The result of this project was that Mrs Shelley wrote Frankenstein, Byron the beginning of a narrative about a vampyre, and Dr Polidori, Byron’s physician, a tale named The Vampyre, the authorship of which used frequently in past years to be attributed to Byron himself. Frankenstein, published in 1818, when Mrs Shelley was at the utmost twenty-one years old, is a very remarkable performance for so young and inexperienced a writer; its main idea is that of the formation and vitalization, by a deep student of the secrets of nature, of an adult man, who, entering the world thus under unnatural conditions, becomes the terror of his species, a half-involuntary criminal, and finally an outcast whose sole resource is self-immolation. This romance was followed by others: Valperga, or the Life and Adventures of Castruccio, Prince of Lucca (1823), an historical tale written with a good deal of spirit, and readable enough even now; The Last Man (1826), a fiction of the final agonies of human society owing to the universal spread of a pestilence—this is written in a very stilted style, but possesses a particular interest because Adrian is a portrait of Shelley; The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck (1830); Lodore (1835), also bearing partly upon Shelley’s biography, and Falkner (1837). Besides these novels there was the Journal of a Six Weeks Tour (the tour of 1814 mentioned below), which is published in conjunction with Shelley’s prose-writings; and Rambles in Germany and Italy in 1840–1842–1843 (which shows an observant spirit, capable of making some true forecasts of the future), and various miscellaneous writings. After the death of Shelley, for whom she had a deep and even enthusiastic affection, marred at times by defects of temper, Mrs Shelley in the autumn of 1823 returned to London. At first the earnings of her pen were her only sustenance; but after a while Sir Timothy Shelley made her an allowance, which would have been withdrawn if she had persisted in a project of writing a full biography of her husband. In 1838 she edited Shelley’s works, supplying the notes that throw such invaluable light on the subject. She succeeded, by strenuous exertions, in maintaining her son Percy at Harrow and Cambridge; and she shared in the improvement of his fortune when in 1840 his grandfather acknowledged his responsibilities and in 1844 he succeeded to the baronetcy. She died on the 21st of February 1851.
SHELLEY, PERCY BYSSHE (1792–1822), English poet, was born on the 4th of August 1792 at Field Place, near Horsham, Sussex. He was the eldest child of Timothy Shelley (1753–1844), M.P. for Shoreham, by his wife Elizabeth, daughter of Charles Pilfold, of Effingham, Surrey. His father was the son and heir of Sir Bysshe Shelley, Bart. (d. 1815), whose baronetcy (1806) was a reward from the Whig party for political services. Sir Bysshe’s father Timothy had emigrated to America, and he himself had been born in Newark, New Jersey; but he came back to England, and did well for himself by marrying successively two heiresses, the first, the mother of Timothy, being Mary Catherine, daughter of the Rev. Theobald Michell of Horsham. He was a handsome man of enterprising and remarkable character, accumulated a vast fortune, built Castle Goring, and lived in sullen and penurious retirement in his closing years. None of his talent seems to have descended to his son Timothy, who, except for being of a rather oddly self-assertive character, was indistinguishable from the ordinary run of commonplace country squires. The mother of the poet is described as beautiful, and a woman of good abilities, but not with any literary turn; she was an agreeable letter-writer. The branch of the Shelley family to which the poet Percy Bysshe belonged traces its pedigree to Henry Shelley, of Worminghurst, Sussex, who died in 1623. These Worminghurst or Castle Goring Shelleys are of the same stock as the Michelgrove Shelleys, who trace up to Sir William Shelley, judge of the common pleas under Henry VII., thence to a member of parliament in 1415, and to the reign of Edward I., or even to the epoch of the Norman Conquest. The Worminghurst branch was a family of credit, but not of special distinction, until its fortunes culminated under the above-named Sir Bysshe.
In the character of Percy Bysshe Shelley three qualities became early manifest, and may be regarded as innate: impressionableness or extreme susceptibility to external and internal impulses of feeling; a lively imagination or erratic fancy, blurring a sound estimate of solid facts; and a resolute repudiation
- ↑ It is further worthy of remark that the young of C. variegata when first hatched closely resemble those of C. rutila, and when the former assume their first plumage they resemble their father more than their mother (P.Z.S., 1866, p. 150).
