352 



HISTORY OF FISHES. 



are valuable in proportion to their scarceness 

 or beauty. 



From the variety of the colours and figures 

 of shells, we may pass to that of their place 



hut he was the discoverer of no fact in their structure or 

 physiology of any consequence we speak in reference 

 to the mollusca only ; and his systematic efforts were 

 limited and partial, although he sometimes drops a hint 

 on the subject, which makes us almost believe that he was 

 capable of better things, had he had courage to have made 

 the attempt. In relation to the mollusca, he clearly saw 

 the impropriety of making the presence or absence of 

 the shell an ordinal character ; and he knew, vaguely it 

 may be, the affinity between the bivalvular mollusca and 

 the Tunicata. 



The celebrated Pallas was another who at this period 

 had obtained a glimpse of the true relations of the mol- 

 lusca as a class even clearer than Muller, but he did 

 not pursue the subject, and as his slight incidental 

 notice, though it might have originated inquiry in a 

 predisposed mind, was not otherwise of a nature to pro- 

 duce any effect, so the pains of Geoffrey and Muller 

 were equally unproductive. The authority of Linnaeus 

 prevailed every where. The force of his genius having 

 swept away all previous systems, there was no other 

 safety for a naturalist, than to take refuge in the Linnaean 

 ark, which floated on the surface proud amid the ruins, 

 the systems of his contemporaries also sinking one 

 after another in the waters of forgetfulness. His dis- 

 ciples were distinguished by their enthusiasm in the 

 pursuit of nature, and their love of their master ; and the 

 facility with which they found theirdiscoveries were regis- 

 tered, and the easy nature of the discoveries which 

 sufficed to give them a certain reputation, requiring 

 nought but zeal, opportunity, and a knowledge of the 

 4 Systema' not difficult to be acquired, rivetted their at- 

 tachments. In England nothing was tolerated that was 

 not according to the letter of Linnaeus: his works were 

 a code of laws which, like an act of Parliament, was to 

 be interpreted verbally, and the spirit of them was un- 

 seen or overlooked. Under his reforming hand, Con- 

 chology having passed 'from confusion and incongruity 

 to lucid order and simplicity,' the slightest attempt to 

 alter this order was treated as an attempt to replunge 

 us into the chaos, whence he had brought us, and further 

 improvement or alteration was declared to be futile, since 

 the ' beauties' of the Linnaean ' must perpetuate its 

 pre-eminence.' Were it shewn that, from the very 

 subsidiary station the animal was made to occupy in this 

 system, there was a fear attention should be drawn from 

 the object most worthy of it, we were seriously told that 

 the animal, even could it be procured, which was 

 doubtful, would never present those ' permanent and 

 obvious points of distinction' indispensable in the ap- 

 plication of a system meant to be practical. Wherein 

 does the animal differ, it was asked in a tone of triumph, 

 signifying that reply was impossible, ' wherein does 

 the animal differ from an unshapen mass of lifele 

 matter when coiled up within its shelly habitation ? 

 And how are its natural shape and appendages to be ex- 

 amined, but by the knife of an anatomist?' Were it 

 proved, what indeed was most palpable, that species of 

 opposite habits and habitations were huddled together 

 under a common head, it was answered that to derive 

 characters from such particulars was contrary to axiom 

 and unphilosophical; and if it were demonstrative that 

 the class of Testacea, as a whole, was constituted o 

 heterogeneous disparates, as for example, when Pallas 

 indicated the difference between this class and the 

 Serpulae, what then ? Nature gloried in variety anc 

 oppositions, and was herself systemless, as if it were 

 possible to believe that He who made every thing it 

 wisdom and order had shook His creatures from his 



and situation. Some are found in the sea ; 



some in fresh-water rivers ; some alive upon 

 and; and a still greater quantity dead in the 

 jowels of the earth. But wherever shells 



land, with the same wanton unordered profusion that 

 he poet has represented the jocund May, flinging the 

 flowerets from her teeming lap. Such were the futile 

 easons by which this System was upheld, and so firm 

 was its despotism that, until within these twenty years, 

 ;here was little or no relaxation on its hold of public 

 opinion ; and its evil effects are too evident in the super- 

 icialness of the productions which emanated from this 

 school. 



Even in France the Linnaean system soon became 

 ittle less predominant under the leading of Bruguiere, 

 but the regard the French paid to it was of a less slavish 

 character than it had assumed in Britain. Bruguiere, 

 though a Linnaean in principle, carried forward in some 

 degree the system of his master by intercalating several 

 new and obviously necessary genera ; and he was other- 

 wise a conchologist of higher attainments than any Eng- 

 land could at that period boast of. He cannot be said 

 to have promoted conchology in any very sensible de- 

 gree, but he made no effort to arrest it, or detain the 

 science at the stage where Linnseus had left it. Nor 

 indeed is it perhaps possible to stop the march of any, 

 however trivial the branch of science, to perfection. 

 Like the operations of Nature in her living productions 

 ever tending to maturity, there are periods of accelera- 

 tion and delay, and causes may for a season induce a 

 ickly weakness that waits long for a remedy, but come 

 at last this will. Conchology was now in her sickly 

 time, nevertheless in a state of constant advancement. 

 Ellis, Baster, Bohadtch, Pallas, Muller, Forskal, So- 

 lander, and Otho Fabricius, all of whom might have 

 seen Linnaeus in the flesh, and were his immediate suc- 

 cessors, drew attention to the naked molluscans in par- 

 ticular, whose curious variety was enticing and provoca- 

 tive to further quest ; Herissant, Scopoli, Bruguiere, and 

 Olivi, described many species with their animals, and 

 entered too into physiological questions which it was 

 worthy reasonable men to solve ; Knorr, Davila, Mar- 

 tini and Chemnitz, Schroter, Born, Pennant, Da Costa, 

 and Martyn, set forth at intervals volumes of figures 

 more numerous in species and more correct than had 

 been hitherto attempted ; and the minute or microscopic 

 species, which notwithstanding their littleness have played 

 a most important part in the revolutions of our globe, 

 were well illustrated in the works of Soldani, Plancus, 

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

 array of names only proves a wider spread of the study, 

 the students may have been, and we think were, 

 mediocrists, many of them were simply ichniographists 

 and collectors.* We can remember no discovery by 

 which to distinguish the period, for the developement or 

 improvement of an artificial system, the accumulation 

 of species, and their more accurate discrimination, though 

 points of considerable importance, are not sufficiently so 

 to mark an era. Perhaps the most curious and interest- 

 ing discovery that was made in it is that of the capa- 

 bility 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. 



* 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 Avas a great discov- 

 erer in his own science ; but one who well knew him lias 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 approbation.' !>' Israeli's Literary Character, 

 Vol. i. p 146- See Abernethy's Physiological Lectures p 193, 

 for . list of the Mollusca anatomized and exhibited in Hunter' 

 Museum ; also p. 217, 263. 



