MALACOLOGY. 



as it were all things living to something like a given 

 scale of structure ; but the mystery of mysteries 

 cannot, ought not to be discovered, for if it could, 

 man would cease to be what he is, and become 

 coequal with his Divine Creator. 



We will here take an opportunity of remarking 

 that we do not affect to be able to throw many new 

 lights upon this science, being ourselves but students, 

 and the result of many years study of this branch of 

 Natural History has only tended to render us more 

 modest of our own abilities more humble in sug- 

 gesting an opinion sometimes adverse to that of our 

 fellow-labourers in the same field, but, nevertheless, we 

 feel it our duty to take advantage of their discoveries, 

 and, by actual examination or analogous reasoning 

 on our part, to verify the truth or point out the inac- 

 curacies that have existed ; indeed, were this not 

 done, mankind would remain stationary in their know- 

 ledge, and the mind unexercised, would sink into a 

 sickly state of apathetic feeling, inconsistent with its 

 nature, disgraceful to its attributes in a higher order 

 of enjoyment, that of looking up with reverential awe 

 to God the author of all, conlessing with humility 

 that there is " good in every thing." In the different 

 articles of malacology, under their alphabetical order, 

 we have pointed out any discrepancies that our expe- 

 rience enabled us to verify, but we trust we have 

 done so without that acrimony which unhappily but 

 too frequently tinctures a difference of scientific 

 opinion ; and we honestly assert that, in so doing, it 

 has not been from a spirit of self-conceit, or a wish to 

 erect ourselves into censors of other men's under- 

 standings, but with a view of diffusing encouragement 

 a spirit of emulation, as far as in us lies, to the 

 study of Natural History smoothing the difficult 

 path that leads to an acquirement of its principles 

 thus rendering it not only more in accordance with 

 nature's laws, but more inviting to nature's admirers 

 by its simplicity. Entertaining, too, a firmly-rooted 

 conviction of its utility in promoting the great end of 

 Christianity, and of its affording a never-ceasing 

 source of worldly gratification, perfectly compatible 

 with every man's more important duties of life in the 

 relative stations of society. We have, indeed, in our 

 times witnessed melancholy examples of miscalled 

 philosophers, whose writings exhibit extraordinary 

 proofs of mental powers, and the no less moral per- 

 version of them : such are happily rare, and a certain 

 antidote to the poison of infidelity can be always 

 readily found by those who truly seek it : 



" Each shell, each crawling insect, holds a rank, 

 Important in the plan of HIM who framed 

 Tins scale of beings, holds a rank, which lost, 

 Would break the chain, and leave behind a gap 

 Which nature's self would rue." LepidojiU-ra, Jiritannica. 



Having in our article CONCHOLOGY promised to 

 give some account of the system of Linnaeus, com- 

 pared with that now more generally, not to say uni- 

 versally, adopted, we cannot do otherwise than re- 

 deem our pledge, without however occupying our 

 pages in the present place with an uninteresting 

 detail of classes, orders, genera, and species, much 

 better exhibited in a tabular point of view. It is 

 also to be remarked that in every article relative 

 to malacology, we have invariably mentioned the 

 grounds upon which the Linnaean school must be aban- 

 doned in modern classification. We shall now, there- 

 fore, but very briefly state, that Linnaeus, having formed 



his system of conchology upon the forms of the shells 

 with which the mollusca are most of them covered, 

 without reference to the animals themselves, but 

 very few molluscs, properly so called, of our time, 

 were either examined or described by him. During 

 the first nine editions of the works of Linnaeus, he 

 has not once mentioned molluscs, the animals now so 

 designated being distributed, the naked species in his 

 order Zoophytes, class Verities, or worms, and such as 

 were clothed with a shell, for the third order of the 

 same class, under the denomination of Testacece. In 

 the first he only distinguished the genera Tethys, with 

 that he classed the Holothurue, Lima.r, and Sepia, 

 which he placed close to the Hydra. In the second, 

 which was not even at that time divided into uni- 

 valves and bivalves, he characterised the genera 

 Patella, Cochlea, in which where included all the tur- 

 binated univalve shells. Cyprcea, Haliotis, and Nau- 

 tilus, for all such as he afterwards called univalves, and 

 under the name name of Concha he comprehended all 

 the bivalves. He, nevertheless, also classed among 

 his TestacecB the Ascidece, under the name of Micro- 

 cosmus. 



In the tenth edition of Linnaeus, some augmenta- 

 tions were made, but the last during his life, the 

 twelfth edition, the class Vermes are divided into five 

 sections, in the second of which, under the denomina- 

 tion of mollusca, eight genera of true molluscs are 

 described, Ascidia, Limax, Aplysia, Doris, Tethys, 

 Sepia, Clio, and Scyllasa ; the third is nearly all devoted 

 to the Testacea, divided into multivalves, bivalves, 



Conus generalis. 



and univalves, the first containing Chiton, Lepas, 

 and Pholas ; the second comprised fourteen Mya, 

 Solen, Tellina, Cardhim, Mactra, Donaa; Venus, Spon- 

 ffy/iis, Chanta, Area, Ostrea, Anomia, J\Tytilits, and 

 Pimm; the third division, or that comprising the uni- 

 valves, is subdivided into two, according as the spire 

 of the shell w as regular or irregular, acute or obtuse, 

 as here figured in the Conus and Bulla. The genera 



Bulla. 



included were, Argonauta, Nautilus, Conus, Cypreea, 

 Sulla, Valuta, Buccinwm, Strombus, Murex, Trochus, 

 Turbo, Helix, Nvrita, Huliotis, Patella, and, bv a re- 

 markable singularity, the genus Teredo. 



In characterising these genera, Linnaeus merely al- 



