MORPHOLOGY OF M0LLV8K8. S41 



the odontophore or lingual ribbon, often absent, is appar- 

 ently a modification of the pliaryngeal teetli of Annelides. 

 Mollusks in general have a heart consisting of a "ventricle 

 and one or two auricles, and in this respect they are more 

 like the Vertebrates than other invertebrated animals ; the 

 highly developed eye of the squids and their imperfect car- 

 tilaginous brain-box are also special characters analogous to 

 tlie eye and brain-box of Vertebrates. Still these features 

 are not homologous with the corresponding parts in the 

 Vertebrates, and we have already seen that the Tunicata, 

 and even the Annelides, are much more closely allied to the 

 Verieirata than are the Mollusks, which should, perhaps, 

 be interpolated between the Brachiopods and Tunicates. 

 The affinities of the Mollusks are, then, decidedly Avith the 

 worms, rather than with the Vertebrates. 



That the Mollusca are a highly specialized and compara- 

 tively modern group is shown by tlie fact that they began 

 to abound after the Brachiopods had had their day in tlie 

 Silurian seas, and had begun to decay and die out as a type ; 

 the shelled Mollusca su^oplanted the shelled Vermes or Brachi- 

 opods. For the upper Silurian period, and those later, tlie 

 Mollusks prove useful as geological time-marks, especially in 

 the Cainozoie jieriod, and so much so that Lyell based his 

 divisions of Tertiary time mainly on the shells which abound 

 in Tertiary strata. 



Although moriohologically the shell of a Mollusk is not 

 the most important feature of the animah it is very charac- 

 teristic of them and of great use in distinguishing the species 

 of existing, but more especially of fossil, forms ; still it is 

 liable to great variation, and mollusks of cpiite differcut 

 families, and even orders, sometimes have shells much alike, 

 so that the characters of shells, like many of those drawn 

 from the peripheral parts of the body, are liable oftentimes 

 to mislead the student. That the Mollusca are a highly 

 specialized group is also seen by the enormous number of 

 existing species, and their wide geographical and bathymet- 

 rical range. There are about 20,000 living and 19,000 

 fossil species known, and the group ranks next to^ the 

 winged insects, also a comparatively recent and highly 



