i86i.] LECTURES ON MOLLUSCA. 



255 



Dr. Henry may have preferred to retain that title. Those who 

 regard shells as mere objects of amusement may better appre- 

 ciate his life-long devotion to their study, after reading his 

 " Introductory Remarks : " — 



" Who has not admired the beauty of shells ? — the rich 

 lustre of the Cowries ; the glossy polish of the Olives ; the 

 brilliant painting of the Cones ; the varied layers of the Cameos ; 

 the exquisite nacre of Mother-of-pearl ? Who has not listened 

 to the mysterious 'sound of the sea' in the Whelks and 

 Helmets, or wondered at the many chambers of the Nautilus ? 

 What child ever went to the sea-shore without picking up shells; 

 or what lady ever spurned them as ornaments of her parlour ? 

 Shells are at once the attraction of the untutored savage, the 

 delight of the refined artist, the wonder of the philosophic 

 zoologist, and the most valued treasures of the geologist. They 

 adorn the sands of sea-girt isles and continents now ; and they 

 form the earliest ' foot-prints on the sands of time' in the 

 history of our globe. The astronomer wandering through 

 boundless space with the grandest researches of his intellect, 

 and the most subtle workings of his analysis, may imagine indeed 

 the history of past time, and speculate on the formation of 

 globes ; but his science presents us with no records of the past 

 But the geologist, after watching the ebb of the ocean-tide, 

 examines into the soil on the surface of the earth, and finds in 

 it a book of chronicles, the letters of which are not unknown 

 hieroglyphics, but familiar shells. He writes the history of 

 each species, antedating by millions of years the first appear- 

 ance of man upon this planet, the abrasion of the Mississippi 

 Valley, or the roar of the Niagara at Queenston Heights. . . . 

 As he reverently unlocks the dark recesses which contain the 

 traditions of the early ages, between the dead igneous rocks, 

 and the oceanic deposits which entomb the remains of life, the 

 first objects which meet his gaze are the remains of a thin, horny 

 shell, so like those now living on the Atlantic and Pacific 

 waters, that the ' footprint ' enables him to reconstruct a 

 Brachiopod with delicate ciliated arms and complex organiza- 

 tion, such as is figured in the beautiful works of Owen and 



