BOOK OF SHELLS. 



Introductory Chapter. 



In reviewing the first Division of the animal kingdom, 

 namely, the vertebral animals, we cannot fail to have 

 been delighted with the wonderful and appropriate fa- 

 culties bestoM'ed upon each individual ; but, beautiful 

 and well adapted to the use of their possessors as these 

 faculties may have appeared, our pleasure must be still 

 greater in tracing the powers with which those creatures 

 are endowed, which constitute what we have been accus- 

 tomed to call the lower orders of animated nature. 



When contemplating the graceful from of the horse 

 or the stag, or the beautiful plumage of the feathered 

 tribes, or when we notice the terrific appearance of the 

 crocodile, or the elaborate finish and metallic lustre of 

 the scales of fishes, we are led to expect that equal care 

 has been bestowed upon the rest of the organization of 

 the different individuals, and that equal attention has 

 been paid to the various instincts and powers that are 

 necessary to their preservation ; but when we observe a 

 snail, or a worm, and compare their more simple appear- 

 ance, and the perfect absence of what we have been ac- 

 customed to consider the organs of motion, namely, feet 

 and hands, we are apt to look on them as having been 

 created for some very subordinate purpose, and, there- 

 fore, less carefully formed than the vertebral animals. 

 How much greater then must be our dehght, when we 

 find them possessed of every power necessary to their 



