109 
wards Kangaroo Island and the ‘Josephine’ Islands; in the miser- 
able abortions of this species which live on the rocks of Nuyts Land, 
one can scarcely recognise the largest shell of Van Diemen’s Land; 
and finally at King George’s Sound one seeks for traces of it in vain. 
“The same is the case with Phasianella, formerly so rare and so 
precious, and which we collected in such large numbers. Maria 
Island is their true country; there it would be possible to load 
vessels with them Like the 1 1 alio tin giganlea of the 
South Cape, they expire at King George’s Sound, after having ex- 
perienced, like it, a series of degradations almost insensible, it is 
true, but which nevertheless end by destroying the species. 
“It would be easy for me to multiply examples; but what I have 
just said of the largest and most beautiful shell of this part of the 
Great Southern Ocean will suffice to prove that animals belonging to 
cold countries cannot advance with impunity into the midst of the 
torrid zones. 
“On the other hand, animals of these latter climates do not ap- 
pear any more suited to live in cold countries, and our own ex- 
perience furnishes an excellent proof of ihis also. 01 all the coun- 
tries which I have seen none can compare with Timor for abundance 
and variety of shells; the richness of its coasts is really, in this 
genus, beyond all expression ; more t han twenty thousand shells, be- 
longing to several hundred species, were obtained there by my 
labours. Yet! of this prodigious multitude of animals, there is not 
one which I could find, either in Van Diemen’s Land, or in the 
southern part of New Holland; it is in Kndracht Land, and conse- 
quently at the beginning of the equatorial region, that some of the 
Timor shells begin to appear. 
“It is not only for species that this singular exclusion holds; one 
observes it also amongst the genera. Without speaking of those 
Crassatellas, ‘Houlettes,’ and especially Trigonias, which appear to 
be so rare in nature in the living state, it holds for genera of which 
numerous species seem to have been almost exclusively confined to 
such or such a part of the globe; thus for example, the equatorial 
countries contain a multitude of Gones, of Olivas, of Cowries, etc., 
which are hardly known on the colder coasts of either hemisphere. 
Thus, whilst Timor and all the neighbouring isles swarm with these 
brilliant shells, two or three small obscure species hardly dare to 
appear in the southern parts of New Holland. It is at the level of 
King George’s Sound that the shells of these pompous genera are 
seen to reappear with some eclat; they succeed, so to speak, to 
Phasianellas and to Haliotis, and continue, whilst further embel- 
lishing it, the admirable geographical scale of the productions of 
nature. Seen from this point of view, science appears to me to 
offer a new career both useful and brilliant to follow, and of which 
the beautiful geographico-zoological divisions of M. de Lacepede, 
and the precious hydrographico-zoological work of M. de Fleurien, 
have gloriously marked the commencement. 
