ON MOLLUSCA. 145 
designated easanguza, a division which corresponds altogether 
with the white-blooded animals of Linnzeus, and the inverte- 
brated animals of modern naturalists ; not that they conceived 
these animals to have no blood, but they termed them so 
merely in comparison with the red-blooded animals. They 
contented themselves with dividing them into two sections, the 
mollusca and testacea, in which they were followed by the 
naturalists at the revival of literature, who, however, added 
but little to the facts already detailed by the ancients. But 
soon, the easy collection of the envelopes of these animals, 
often of the most extraordinary beauty, having become an 
object of curiosity, and even of rivalship, among the rich, the 
study of the animal itself was forgotten in an exclusive atten- 
tion to the shell. Thus arose that part of natural history 
properly called conchology, on which. we have so many mag- 
nificent works, mere objects of luxury, almost in all countries. 
On this department we shall bestow a few general remarks in 
the proper place In vain did our celebrated countryman, 
Lister, before him Fabius Columna, and after, Willis, Heyde, 
Swammerdam, &c., give the anatomy of many molluscous 
animals; no attention was paid to establish their classification, 
on their external organization, on their form, and still less on 
their internal structure. It is true that Linnezeus, in the earlier 
editions of his Systeme Nature, speaks of the animal of his 
testacea, before he exposes the characters of the genera; but 
he confines himself to citing the name of his mollusca, with 
which they have the greatest relation, and the genus is really 
established on nothing but the form of the shell. 
The great majority of the naturalists of the last age followed 
the example of this great man, as we shall see by and by; 
but some French naturalists began to see the necessity of re- 
curring to the animals to arrive at a proper classification of 
the shells. Thus, in 1743, Daubenton read to the Academy 
of Sciences, of which he was not yet a member, a memoir on 
VOL. XII. L 
