ON ANNELIDA. 
81 
fined : animal similar to the nereides, open mouth, with two 
thick tentacula behind the head, contained in a tubular shell, 
composed of grains of sand retained in a vaginal membrane. 
But as at this period, the animals which form the arenaceous 
tubes, were but very ill known, it is not surprising that at- 
tention was given rather to the tube than to the animal, for 
the purpose of increasing the species of this genus. To this 
was doubtless owing the addition made by Gmelin to the 
species of Linnaeus, of a great number of the cases or sheaths 
of the phryganea , or of neighbouring genera of insects, the 
larvae of which are found in fresh water, and of which, in 
imitation of Schroter, whom he has unluckily copied, he 
makes as many species, as there are different bodies which 
enter into the composition of those tubes. Some modern 
zoologists, and particularly the French authors, have adopted 
this genus with some modification, and others have taken no 
notice of it. 
Thus, M. de Lamarck, in the first edition of his Inverte- 
b rated Animals, makes no mention of the Sabellae. It appears, 
according to his definition, that he arranged the known species 
under Amphitrite ; but in his last work, he established under 
the name of Sabellarm , a new genus for one of the species of 
the Sabellae of Linnaeus. 
M. Cuvier, in his “ Tableau Elementaire,” appears to have 
intended to place the true Sabellae of Linnaeus in the genus 
Amphitrite ; but in the Regne Animal, he has named Sabellae, 
those chetopods, whose tube is usually clayey, whose gills 
are fan-like, and without appendages in the form of a comb. 
Of the habits of those animals there is nothing to remark. 
To pursue this genus through the subdivisions of the text 
would be useless. We should find nothing to entertain our 
readers, but the controversies and blunders of naturalists, and 
the everlasting revolutions of nomenclature, 
Te re Bella is a genus of Chetopoda, with artificial tubes, 
VOL. XIII. g 
