Bibliographical Notices. 445 



Society. Exercising what we cannot but think a most wise discretion, 

 the Council of that learned body has conferred upon Mr. Darwin one 

 of the Royal Medals for the present year : and in paying due honour 

 to abilities so various and so solid as those which have enabled their 

 possessor to produce the most charming book of scientific travels since 

 Humboldt's personal narrative, and who now, turning from the beau- 

 ties of the great works of nature, has employed the same patient, con- 

 scientious labour, in the same comprehensive and philosophical spirit 

 with equal success, upon some of the least attractive and most diificult 

 of her more obscure, though to a right vision, not less wonderful or 

 beautiful creations, they may, we venture to say, claim their own share 

 of honour from the public. 



Nor, while we are expressing approbation, should the Ray Society 

 go without its meed. The British pubUc in matters scientific is not 

 unlike the Indians of the Orinooko, who care not much whether they 

 dine on dirt or deer ; the great point, say they, is to fill the stomach. 

 So we have heard grumblings from the members of the * Ray ' that 

 they do not get books enough or often enough. We would ad\-ise 

 them to utter no more such murmurs, or worse things may befall them. 

 In nine years their Council has published the three best Monographs 

 in Europe in their respective departments, \\z. that of Prof. Forbes 

 on the Naked-eyed Medusae, that of Messrs. Alder and Hancock on 

 the Nudibranchiate Mollusca, and that under notice on the Cirri- 

 pedia. A fourth most excellent original work has been furnished by 

 Dr. Baird, and a very good, though in the matter of plates very 

 defective, treatise by ^Ir. Leighton. Of the multitudinous reports 

 and translations we need say nothing. 



We may now proceed to inchcate the principal points of novel in- 

 terest in the pages of Mr. Darwin's admirable work. 



In the first place he furnishes us with what is essential to all exact 

 study of a class of animals, a definite and scientific nomenclature of 

 the parts of all its members. Passing from this to the Lepadidae, 

 which are the special subject of the present volume, we find a careful 

 section devoted to their development. Here, the errors of the early 

 observers, who imagined that the lanse of the Lepadidse and Bala- 

 nidse differed, are explained by showing, what Burmeister first dis- 

 covered, that all these larvae pass through two states, the earlier 

 having a flat carapace prolonged into lateral horns, the later possess- 

 ing a cypriform bivalve carapace. Between these two states there 

 is a transition condition. In the first state the mouth appears to be 

 open, in the last it is closed, so that the creature now justly deserves 

 the title which Mr. Darwin has given it of ' locomotive pupa.' 



The locomotive pupa, besides the long antennae and the eyes, al- 

 ready known, has what Mr. Darwin considers to be auditory organs 

 placed at the anterior end of the sternal surface of the carapace. 

 Within the antennae Mr. Darwin has discovered ducts terminating 

 close to the suctorial discs, and proceeding from two glands in the 

 neighbourhood of the stomach. These play a most important part 

 in the future proceedings of the animal, and give origin to what the 

 author terms the cement-glands and ducts. When the final meta- 



