344 STUDY OF NATURAL HISTORY. 



tinent, there are few of our readers, we imagine, 

 who will deny that any authorities can be greater 

 than those just named, each of whom, speaking 

 with reference to those sciences which they parti- 

 cularly study, concur in opinion that England has 

 rapidly fallen behind the neighbouring nations. In 

 reference to zoology, we have already given reasons 

 in another place * for forming the same conclusion, 

 nor need we stop there. We have long consigned 

 comparative anatomy as regards the Vertebrata, as 

 if by indolent consent, to the French ; while that 

 of the Annulosa has only just begun to excite some 

 attention among us, in consequence of the splendid 

 essays of Chablier, Leon Dufour, and others. Who, 

 let us ask, has done any thing to elucidate the struc- 

 ture of the naked Mollusca^ by following up the 

 splendid discoveries of Savigny, the delicate and 

 inimitable dissections of Poli, and a host of others, 

 emanating from the zoological schools of France, 

 Germany, and Italy ? But this is not all : so little 

 are the higher objects — the true philosophy — of 

 our science, esteemed or cultivated, that discoveries 

 of the first order, which open a new and unexpected 

 field for the most important generalisations, and 

 which will eventually overturn all the existing dog- 

 mas of systematists, these discoveries we have suf- 

 fered to die almost in their birth, although they 

 have actually been made by our own countrymen! 

 Who, let us ask, has attempted to verify and follow 

 up M'Leay's theory on the arrangement of the 



* Northern Zoology, vol. ii. pref. p. xl. 



