TO A. HANCOCK, ESQ. 263 



No. 9. 

 (No postal date. Marked 1850 by A. H.) 



Down Farnborough, Kent, 



Saturday. 

 My dear Sir, 



I am ashamed at myself to think how long I have 

 taken to send you my Mollusca. I have now got them in a 

 bottle, and will send with them a catalogue of localities. There 

 are about sixty packets, though some are duplicates. I send 

 with them the rudest notes of colour a;nd size made at the time. 

 The colours are given by comparison with Pat. Symes' (?) nomen- 

 clature. The notes are those of an ignorant schoolboy, as I was 

 almost then, and shamefully written. I would have copied them 

 out if they had had any value. Will you nevertheless preserve 

 these notes, for as one sometimes likes to see an old book, so I 

 like to keep my wretched zoological notes. I fear my specimens 

 can be of hardly any interest to you, they must be so shrunk 

 from the spirits. I tJiinh there are one or two new genera. I 

 will despatch the box with large bottle on next "Wednesday, the 

 first day our carrier goes. You will understand I do not want 

 specimens ever returned. If there should be any part of MS. 

 which you by chance should wish to read, I will with pleasure 

 copy it. 



Very many thanks for the Clitia. It has astonished me and 

 convinced me of my ignorance. I entirely give up the burrow- 

 ing of your Alcippe and my Arthrobalanus (= CryptopMalus 

 minutus) ; I only do not give up Lithotrya, from its large mis- 

 shapen cup being so ill-formed for burrowing, and from its having 

 a beautiful rasping apparatus. How difficult it is to discuss any 

 point by letter. I now see that I omitted to mention to you 

 that all round the base, and therefore widest part of the head or 

 shell on the top of the peduncle, there is a beautiful rasping rim 

 or circular toothed saw; renewed, moreover, during every moult, 

 when the shell and animal increases in size ; and as the peduncle 

 has great power to lengthen and shorten and twist itself about I 

 cannot doubt, and if you were to fix a young Lithotrya at the 



