LINNEAN SOCIETY OF LONDON. Ixxiii 



been reviewed by M. Emile Blanchard in his aunual Addresses to 

 the Meetings of the Delegates of French Scientific Societies, held 

 every April at the Sorbonne from 1865 to 1870. The Societe Bo- 

 tanique de France had also up to that time been active, and the pub- 

 lication of its proceedings brought down nearly to the latest meetings, 

 I am compelled, however, for want of time, to defer some details I 

 had contemplated relating to the recent labours of French biologists ; 

 but I cannot refrain from inserting the following note on a work 

 mentioned only, but not analyzed, in the last volume of the * Zoological 

 Kecord,' obligingly communicated to me with other memoranda by 

 Professor Deshayes, Avhilst slowly recovering from a severe illness 

 contracted during the German siege : — " In Mollusca we have also 

 to regret that we have no complete work embracing the whole of 

 this important branch of the animal kingdom. It is true that we 

 make use of numerous works published in England, amongst which 

 several are excellent, such as those of Forbes and Hanley, Gwyn 

 Jeffreys, &c. Nevertheless I have to point out to you an excellent 

 work piiblished in 1869 by M. Petit de la Saussaye. The author, 

 a very able and scientific conchologist, is unfortunately just dead. 

 He has had the advantage of preparing a general catalogue of tes- 

 taceous MoUusea of the European Seas, possessing in his own col- 

 lection nearly the whole of the species inserted, and of having 

 received direct from the authors named specimens of the species 

 foreign to the French coasts. This work is divided into two parts. 

 The fijst is devoted to the methodical and synouymical catalogue of 

 the species, amounting to 1150. In the second part, these species 

 are distributed geographically into seven zones, starting from the 

 most northern and ending with the hot regions of the Mediterranean. 

 These zones are thus distinguished : — 1, the polar zone ; 2, the 

 boreal zone ; 3, the British zone ; 4, the Celtic zone ; 5, the Lusi- 

 tanian zone ; 6, the Mediterranean zone ; and 7, the Algerian 

 zone. Some years since it would have been impossible for M. Petit 

 to have established the fifth zone, for that nothing, literally nothing, 

 was known of the malacological fauna of Spain. Its seas were 

 until 1867 less known than those of New Holland or California. 

 It was only in that year that Hidalgo published a well-drawn-up 

 synonymic catalogue in Crosse and Fischer's ' Journal de Conchy- 

 liologie.' " 



VIII. Britain. 



The British Isles have less even than France of an endemic cha- 

 racter in respect of biology. They form, as it were, an outlying 



