86 REVIEWS. 



POPULAR BKITISH CONCHOLOGY ; A Familiar History of the Molluscs 

 Inhabiting the British Isles. By George Brettingham Sowerby, F.L.S., 

 Author of " Manual of Conchology," &c., &c. London : Lovell Reeve. 

 1854. With twenty Coloured Plates. Royal IGino. Price 10s. 6d. 



THE work before us is essentially popular in its character and design, and 

 may be considered to form one of a series of such works from time to time 

 appearing, some of which have already received notice in our pages. 

 Useful and attractive, they serve greatly to lessen the apparent repul- 

 siveness of long scientific descriptions and tedious research, which, in 

 former days, were the only means of gaining any insight into nature's 

 works, and which still must continue the single path for scaling the high 

 eminence of real distinction in scientific knowledge. 



Mr. Sowerby opens with a very brief preface, in which we are informed 

 that he adopts, without hesitation or reserve, the scientific arrangement of 

 the classes, orders, and genera given by Messrs. Forbes and Hanley, in 

 their great work on British mollusca ; having announced which fact, he 

 speedily commences his work, proceeding to enumerate the British species 

 under each genus, and to interweave with the descriptions many of the 

 most interesting details that can be collected in regard to the economy of 

 each. Scientific descriptions he has entirely waived, and in their place he 

 mentions of each of the species any peculiarity, whether of form or colour, 

 that may be calculated to strike the eye ; indeed they are mostly those 

 signs by which naturalists are wont to discriminate the species as they see 

 them cast upon the shore, although not, in many cases, the really dis- 

 tinctive characters of each. 



In one point, however, which would have been no small assistance to 

 his readers, the author has shown a strange neglect we mean in hardly 

 ever alluding to the comparative size of different species, either in the de- 

 scriptions or figures ; some of the more minute are represented in the plates 

 by highly-magnified figures, some of the larger on a diminished scale, 

 while others appear their natural size. But how, under the circumstances, 

 any one previously unacquainted with the subject is intended to identify 

 the shells, we are at a loss to imagine. 



Moreover, we must notice another fault in the work, which might still 

 more easily have been avoided ; it is the wide separation of the plates 

 from the descriptions of the species figured in them. It is our opinion 

 that it would have been better to collect them all together at the end, than 

 that Plate X., facing page 136, should relate to the shells mentioned from 

 page 69 to page 74 ; while Plate XL might, with more convenience to 

 the reader, have taken the place of Plate VI. 



