PROF. EDWARD FORBES AS A ZOOLOGIST 53 



corroborated and extended all he said on this head, for the 

 investigator cannot too soon rescue his delicate young fishes 

 from these insatiable jellies. 



The fine work on the British Mollusca and their shells by 

 Prof. Edward Forbes and Sylvanus Hanley, begun in 1848, 

 marks an era in British Malacology, and, though finished in 

 1853, still holds a valued place on the shelves of every marine 

 zoologist ; and this notwithstanding that the veteran, Dr Gwyn 

 Jeffreys, to whom, v/ith Joshua Alder, the work was dedicated, 

 published a new treatise in five volumes between 1862 and 

 1869. The hand of the accomplished Forbes can be traced 

 in every page, and in most of the figures from the living 

 forms in the first volume, the beauty and accuracy of the 

 outlines showing the touch of a finished artist. His wide 

 marine experiences had shown him that the molluscan in- 

 habitants of our shores form a composite assemblage, " in 

 which immigrants from the north and from the south inter- 

 mingle with the aboriginal inhabitants, and descendants of 

 a pre-Adamite fauna survive amongst them." The marine 

 mollusca are placed under nine types, viz. : the Lusitanian, 

 impinging only on our southern areas ; the South British 

 type, on the south and south-western shores ; the European 

 type, widely diffused on the coasts of Europe ; the Celtic 

 type, characteristic of the British area as a whole ; the British 

 type, comprehending species little known, or it may be 

 unknown elsewhere; the Atlantic type, found on the western 

 coasts of Britain ; the Pelagic type, such as the Pteropods, 

 Pelagic Gastropods, the Cephalopods, and the borers in 

 floating wood {Teredo and XylopJiagd) ; and lastly, the Arctic 

 type, belonging to a more northern race and represented 

 amongst others by the graceful little Clione which like a deft 

 human swimmer glides gracefully through the water with 

 " arms " extended. The land and freshwater molluscs are 

 also grouped under several types. 



In this important work the zoties which Forbes had 

 mapped out so clearly in former memoirs enabled him to 

 range the marine molluscs in definite areas, which, however, 

 interdigitate with each other, though the lowest, the Abyssal 

 Region, occupies but an insignificant portion of the British 



