256 Analytical Notices of Books. 



but on the contrary much positive mischief, in this continual change of 

 names, which appears to have been made for no other earthly reason than 

 because the authour imagined that he could invent more appropriate and 

 expressive designations than those by which the objects to which they are 

 applied had been previously known : a degree of license in the alteration 

 of the received phraseology which, if once admitted as a sufficient 

 justification, would speedily lead to the utter confusion of all scientific 

 nomenclature, and render it almost impossible to identify the subjects of 

 our investigations with those of our predecessors in the same career. The 

 paper before us, however, we must in justice observe, evinces considera- 

 ble ingenuity in its details, which combine much conjectural acumen with 

 the numerous facts in comparative osteology on which it is founded. The 

 position of the two latter animals in the scale of nature is nevertheless 

 left in the same doubtful state of suspense between the three great classes 

 of Quadrupeds, Birds, and Amphibia, in which the authour found it. 

 As for his conjectures on the order in which animals were originally cre- 

 ated, beginning with the clumsiest and most bulky, and passing gradually, 

 as the creative power diminished, to the smaller and more active, of the 

 lowest grade of which he imagines that the earth may still daily produce 

 new forms, we may safely leave them to be dealt with by his own coun- 

 trymen, convinced that, here at least, such startling paradoxes would 

 meet with few believers. 



A paper by Professor Rapp, " Ueber das Molluskengeschlecht Doris," 

 may be regarded as a valuable supplement to M. Cuvier's excellent me- 

 moir on the genus Doris in the Annates du Museum. All the species 

 of this genus, as limited by Cuvier, are briefly enumerated, with occa- 

 sional remarks upon such as have fallen under the notice of the authour, 

 and six new ones are added to the list, which is thus made to consist of 

 no fewer than twenty-seven. All these additions, with one exception, 

 the D. pseudo-argus, Rapp, which had already been represented in 

 Pennant's British Zoology, under the name of D. .^rgo, are well-figured ; 

 as are also the true D. Argus and the D. tuberculata. Cm., both of 

 which the authour found in abundance at Naples. The five entirely new 

 species, which he describes under the names of D. grandiflora, luteo- 

 rosea, sctigera, pallens, and gracilis, are also natives of the same coast 



In Dr. Carus's " Neue Beobachtungen liber das drehen des Embryo im 



