XIX 



PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS 



K3N THE OBJECTS CONTAINED IN PLATE VIII., ENTITLED "LIVING ILLUSTRATIONS 

 OF FOSSIL CONCHOLOGY," ETC. 



Man, when he becomes the historian of the animal kingdom, gen- 

 •erally considers his own structure as a type of the most perfect organ- 

 ization ; and regards those animals that depart the most from this 

 type, and have the smallest number of organs and senses, as the least 

 perfect. Strictly speaking, every animal is perfect, that is, so organ- 

 ized as to answer the purposes for which it was created : yet with re- 

 ference to ourselves, we may, without much impropriety of language, 

 call those animals which have the smallest number of organs and sen- 

 ses, the most imperfect. The very earliest inhabitants of the ancient 

 world appear chiefly to have belonged to those orders of imperfect 

 animals, that had little power of locomotion, and few organs of sense: 

 many of them were without heads or eyes, and were, like the oyster, 

 confined in shells, which they could merely open and close. Of these 

 there were such immense multitudes, that calcareous mountains of 

 vast magnitude and extent, are sometimes chiefly composed of their 

 remains. 



From what we see of the present animal creation, we have reason 

 to believe, that creatures of every species, when free, and provided 

 with the aliment they require, derive pleasure from the very action 

 of their organs, and from existence itself. Of the kind or extent of 

 the happiness enjoyed by a creature enveloped in darkness, and with- 

 out head, heart, or eyes, or the power of removing its habitation, we 

 can, however, form no idea ; yet for any thing we know to the contra- 

 ry, the inhabitant of a bivalve shell, may be far happier, than the monk 

 immured in his stony cell, or than other individuals of the highest or- 

 der — Man — who, however perfect their physical organization, make 

 but little use of the intellectual and moral organs, figuratively called 

 the head and the heart. 



Dr. Paley, in his "Natural Theology," has some beautiful reflec- 

 tions on the apparent happiness enjoyed by shoals of young shrimps, 

 that were bounding into the air from the shallow margin of the water, 

 or from wet sand. He observes : " If any motion of a mute animal 

 could express delight, it was this." We cannot take cognizance of 

 the actions of creatures enclosed in bivalve shells ; but a distinguished 

 philosopher was so fully convinced of the happiness enjoyed by testa- 

 ceous animals, that he calls calcareous mountains, filled with their re- 

 mains, " monuments of the felicity of past ages." 



It is with a view to excite the curiosity of the geological student, 

 and to direct his attention to something beside the external form of 

 shells, that I offer the following observations, and not with the design 

 to teach fossil conchology, which the limits of the present volume 

 would not admit of. 



The reader who is entirely unacquainted with conchology may 

 form some general idea of a shell, if he be told that it is univalve, like 

 a snail or a perriwinkle ; or bivalve, like the muscle or cockle. 



There are, however, numerous fossil bodies classed with shells, of 

 which the general reader can form no notion whatever from the 

 names ; — such are the orthoceratite, the scaphite, &c. These are 



