PLATE XXXIV, 



Under all its circumstances it may be a matter of some indiffer- 

 ence to the scientific Naturalist whether in the arrangement of the 

 Anomiae we follow the concise method of the old writers and Linneeus 

 among the number, or the diffuse distribution of later writers. If we 

 place them in different families according to their characters, whether 

 regarded as sectional distinctions of Anomia, or as distinct genera, 

 we shall at least produce some consistency in the arrangement. But 

 there is yet another mode of arrangement which appears to be the 

 favourite theme with some Conchologists of the present day, and 

 which it may be proper in this place to mention, namely, the classi- 

 fication of shells according to their animals. This has been attempted 

 in the work of Cuvier, his " Regne Animal," and the result of this 

 endeavour, so far as it relates to the Anomia in particular, may in this 

 place deserve our explicit observation. In this work ( R^gne Animal ) 

 Cuvier endeavouring to class the Anomias according to the animals 

 known to inhabit them, as well as those which he imagines for the fossil 

 tribes, so disperses them, that the Trochi, Turbines, Nautih, Volutae, 

 and indeed nearly the whole of the Univalves intervene between his 

 two first genera of these bivalves^ Hyal^a and Anomia; and the 

 Anomia tridentata of Forskahl, which is the Hyalsea of this author, is 

 placed with Clio (the shell of which is our Bulla Jperta*) among the 

 Pteropodes. After the long interval occasioned by this introduction of 

 the Univalves we find Anomia,+ and Placuna, two of his genera toge- 

 ther, but with another tribe of beings, the animal inhabitants being of 

 his class Acephales ; and after another wide interval in which the 

 bivalve Mya,j the multivalve Pholas,^ the univalve Teredo, || and the 



*t|1[l| Many of these are found on our own coasts. Vide Donovan's 

 British Shellsy in which the figures and descriptions of a number of the 

 species of these genera occur. 



