21 
days of Solander, but the animal was still imperfectly known. Tt 
must evidently be very much compressed ; how it closed its shells was 
at present a mystery. The shell was free, irregular, and very flat, with 
thin valves; the hinge was internal, presenting two ridges meeting at a 
point and forming an angle, with corresponding channels on the other 
valve to which a ligament was attached. This hinge was the distinctive 
character of the genus. 
The next interesting shell was Dentaliwm entalis (tooth shell), 
belonging to a group which Deshayes divided into four and Sander 
Rang into three groups, viz., those which are split, those which are 
not split, and those having a marginal collar. D. entalis; the only 
British species, belonged to the second group. The shell was a tubular, 
prolonged, and slightly curved cone, open at both ends, and tapering 
smaller at the posterior than at the anterior end. The tooth shells 
burrowed in sand and mud and devoured foraminifera and tiny bivalve 
shells. Their bloodwas red. The reproductive organs were unknown. 
It was not even certain whether they had eyes. 
_ It was his lot, in 1851, when the learned world almost unanimously 
believed the Pholas made its crypts by a chemical solvent, to discover 
and make knownits perforating machinery, but he was entirely ignorant, 
and, so far as he could learn, no one knew its reproductive apparatus. 
Here was a field for those who loved to observe living animals and for 
all who delighted in microscopical research, 
The shells found in cabinets were, undoubtedly, beautiful and 
marvellous ; but when the animals which made them were known, and 
their forms, instruments, habitats, manners, and life history familiar 
to the coming generation as their shells now were to us, they would 
wonder we should have so long made more of the shells than 
of their inhabitants. 
In 1851 and 1852 he offered the Zoological Gardens of London 
and the Jardin des Plantes of Paris to establish aquaria and exhibit 
Pholades at work, but it was not accepted. Now London and Parishad 
their aquaria, and soon Brighton would outvie them. Here, with the 
Library and the Sea, the younger members had the power of making 
the Natural History Society of Brighton take a rank among the learned 
Societies of the world unsurpassed by any other provincial Society. 
Mr. R. Glaisyer exhibited Succinia Sutris and a bivalve shell from 
