518 HISTORY OF CONCHOLOGY. 



microscopic species, which notwithstanding their littleness, 

 have played a most important part in the revolutions of our 

 globe, were well illustrated in the great work of Soldani, 

 and more partially in the less laborious works of Plancus, 

 Boys and Walker, and of Fichtel and Moll. Yet this array 

 of names only proves a wider spread of the study, — the stu- 

 dents may have been, and we think were, mediocrists,— many 

 of them were simply iconographists and collectors.'* We can 

 remember no discovery by which to distinguish the period, 

 for the development or improvement of an artificial system, 

 the accumulation of species, and their more accurate dis- 

 crimination, though points of considerable importance, are 

 not sufficiently so to mark an era. Perhaps the most curious 

 and interesting discovery that was made in it is, that of the 

 capability of the snail to reproduce its tentacula, eyes, and 

 head, when these have been cut off, — the phenomena of 

 which singular reintegration were amply elucidated by the 

 experiments of Spallanzani, Bonnet, and others. 



The first to raise us from this enchained slumber was 

 Cuvier. Before this great naturalist entered the field, Poli, 

 a Neapolitan physician, had indeed anatomized with admi- 

 rable skill the bivalved mollusca of his native shores, and 

 had constructed a new arrangement of them from the cha- 

 racters of the animal alone, but partly from the political 

 position of Europe, partly from the very expensive fashion 

 in which Poli's work was published, and its consequent ex- 

 tremely limited circulation, and in part also from the partial 

 application of his system and its didactic character, the 

 erroneousness of his general views, and the novelty of his 

 nomenclature, — we cannot trace its influence either as dif- 

 fusive or propulsive of conchology.f The result of Cuvier's 

 labours was happily very different. In 1788, when he was 

 scarcely nineteen years of age, circumstances fixed Cuvier 



* It is most especially necessary to except from this remark John Hunter, 

 but his labours and views were not published, and were not appreciated. 

 " John Hunter was a great discoverer in his own science ; but one who well 

 knew him has told us, that few of his contemporaries perceived the ultimate 

 object of his pursuits ; and his strong and solitary genius laboured to perfect 

 his designs without the solace of sympathy, without one cheering^ approba- 

 tion." — D'Israeli's Literary Character, i. 146. See Abernethy's Physi- 

 ological Lectures, p. 193, for a list of the Mollusca anatomized and exhi- 

 bited in Hunter's Museum, also p. 217, 263. 



t I borrow the following synopsis of Poli's classification from Deshayes, 

 never having seen Poli's work : it is limited to the Conchifera, which arc 

 named 



MOLLUSCA TESTACEA SUBSILIENTIA. 



Family i. Mollusks with double siphons and a foot.— Genera— Hypogea, 

 Peronsea, Callista, Arthemis, Cerastes. 



