380 Intelligence and Miicclluncuns Articles. 



without impugning the vaHdity ot'either ; and tliat M. Cuvier's ex- 

 planation of the term ' unity ofcompoiiiion appears to be merely 

 an expression, in terms less definite than those used by INIr. Mac- 

 Leay, of some of the more comprehensive relations of analogy 

 existing in the animal kingdom. See Horce Entomologicce, p. 248 

 to 260, &c. Edit.] 



ON the 15th of February last MM. (jeofFroy-Saint-Hilaire and 

 Latreille made a report on the Memoir of MM. Meyraux and 

 Laurencet, intitled " Considerations on the Organization of Mol- 

 lusca," <Src. The authors have devoted themselves for some time 

 past to considerable anatomical labours; they have prepared for 

 early publication plates of more than t/ircc thousand new facts of 

 anatomy, relating to all the difficulties of the science. These de- 

 signs give the zootomy of a number of animals of the middle and 

 lower ranks of the zoological series, such as reptiles, tortoises, sa- 

 lamanders, fish, Crustacea, insects, and moliusca of different orders. 

 MM. Meyraux and Laurencet, thinking themselves sufficiently pre- 

 pared by the labours of which we have just spoken, have adopted 

 as general facts the following propositions : 



1st, Every molluscum presents, under an envelope more or less 

 destitute of solid parts and of sensitive apparatus attached to them, a 

 vegetative system resembling that of one or more superior animals. 

 2nd, The viscera which compose these apparatuses are placed in 

 the Moliusca in the same connections as in the superior animals, and 

 their functions are exercised in them by a similar mechanism and 

 moving organs. 3rd, The connections designated as disturbed are 

 only so in appearance; the key for discovering their undeviating 

 constancy is furnished by the consideration that the moliusca, 

 whose trunk, keeping in other respects a longitudinal position, 

 is found on the contrary bent towards its half, and that the two 

 portioiiS returning on each other, soldered the one to the other, 

 are reversed sometimes on what is called the ventral face, some- 

 times on the face called dorsal. 4th, The folds in question discover 

 themselves externally by the respective position of the orifices. 

 5th, Lastly, in the case of parts resisting and fixed in the skin, these 

 earthy masses are also comparable to certain bony portions in ver- 

 tebrated animals. Desirous of supplying the justification of these 

 theoretic views, MM. Meyraux and Laurencet make an application 

 of it to the order Cephalopoda, and indeed to explain their idea 

 more clearly, to one of the species in particular ; viz. the cuttle-fish 

 (Sepia officinnlis\ After following the authors in their anatomical 

 labours upon this molluscous animal, and the remarks by which they 

 accompany them, the reporter, M. Gtoffroy-Saint-Hilaire, proceeds 

 with the following reflections suggested to him by the organization 

 uf the cuttle-fish : " If wc find inclosed in the same integuments, 

 organs so elevated by their structure as are two venous hearts and 

 one arterial heart, a perfectly regular set of branchiae, medullary 

 matter chiefly concentrated at the nape of the neck, a very large 

 liver, a scries of vessels secreting urine; if in like manner we find 

 absociated and placed together an entire intebtinal apparatus, a 



beak 



