CLASSIFICATION. 3 
I may mention that these remarks were scarcely dry, when 
I received from Exmouth a pine log full of magnificent Teredo 
megotara alive, which species I had not seen for thirty years, 
and enabled me to supply the anatomy of the Teredines. 
And in 1852 I reaped a splendid crop of rare desiderata, 
which I had almost despaired of. The gleanings of the 
harvest still remain, and will amply repay the labours of the 
energetic naturalist. 
We have given no figures of the animals or shells, and only 
occasionally in the text, short notices of the hard parts; but 
we have supplied this want, by referring to the excellent and 
recently published ‘ British Mollusca,’ by Professor Forbes 
and Mr. Hanley, of which we will observe, that no mala- 
cologist can dispense with this vade mecum, wherem will be 
found delineations, and copious descriptions of the shells of 
every animal mentioned in our work, with figures of many 
typical animals, and we have added references to those British 
species that have escaped our researches. Sir Walter Scott 
tells us, that nature having denied Mr. Croftangry a pencil, 
he endeavoured to make words answer the purpose of delinea- 
tion ;—I almost think, though faney may be equally expansive 
in both cases, that if one has any general knowledge of the 
subject, a particular description of any of the variously formed 
objects of nature would ensure as good a distinctive resem- 
blance as if drawn pictorially from life; the only exception is 
the human race, in which nature having arrived at the ex- 
treme limits of animal composition, illustrated by there being 
absolutely the same number and quality of the external organs 
in every tribe, the chef-d’a@uvre of her works may, perhaps, 
be better expressed by portrait than by description; but all 
the other objects of animated nature, even in the same divi- 
sion, differ so exceedingly from each other, for example, in the 
present case, the Mollusca, that descriptive notes may possibly 
be preferable to artistical representation. 
