172 APHRODITA. 
The beautiful green and golden hair loses its brilliance a day or two 
after separation. 
This animal is not rare. 
PiateE XXIV. 
Fia. 15. Aphrodita aculeata, back. 
16. Belly. 

The subjects of the two preceding chapters seem to have proved 
particularly embarrassing to naturalists, whose modes of treating them 
are extremely different. Some have been content with description brief 
and simple, others have offered representations of the external form, and 
a few have occupied themselves with minute and laborious dissections. 
However meritorious the last may be, and though perhaps the most 
serviceable to the cause and permanence of natural history, as a science 
founded on internal organization, it is plam that such a system is quite 
incompatible with the views and practice of those observers desiring to 
ascertain the nature of living animals, by gaining acquaintance with their 
habits. Neither can dissection ever prove as popular a method of ar- 
rangement, as one derived from external configuration and habits com- 
bined. 
If it be extremely difficult to ascertain the proper name, or the pre- 
cise functions of some of the external organs, much more so must it be 
to declare the office of many of those which are internal. But structural 
characters are beautiful as a profound study, which merits all encourage- 
ment from the contributions to our knowledge which it has furnished. 
But whatever may have been the individual views of the respective 
authors adopting these different modes of research, all seem eager to quit 
the pursuit, as if deterred by the extreme and .unsatisfactory embarrass- 
ments attending its protracted prosecution. 
I do not feel quite assured, that in the various figures given in this 
volume of the animals ranked as Annelides, that they are not identified 
