No. 5.— OBSERVATIONS ON LIVING LAMELLI^ 
BRANCHS OF NEW ENGLAND. 
BY EDWARD S. MORSE. 
Many years ago I resolved to make drawings of the expanded 
soft parts of New England Mollusca with the intention of ulti- 
mately pubhshing the drawings in some form. One of the 
drawings used in this memoir dates back to 1855. Though my 
studies since that early date have led me far afield I have never 
lost interest in the subject and at every convenient opportunity 
have made drawings of the living animals. In few of the books 
and memoirs published on shells are descriptions of the soft parts 
given and still rarer are figures of the expanded animals. The 
classical work of Forbes and Hanley gives figures of nearly all 
the English genera but these drawings are on too small a scale 
to depict the ;ninor details of the most beautiful parts of the 
creature such as the syphonal openings, the graceful papillae, 
the fringed mantle, etc., and many of these figures are inaccurate. 
Jeffreys' work of five volumes on the British Mollusca copies the 
figures of Forbes and Hanley and transmits their inaccuracies. 
The valuable work on the Invertebrata of Massachusetts, by 
Dr. A. A. Gould, pubUshed by the State in 1841, deals mostly 
with the shells and gives figures of all the species known at that 
time, in a series of engraved plates, but no figures are given of 
the soft parts. In 1870, the State published a second edition of 
this work edited by W. G. Binney. This was illustrated by wood 
engravings, in the text, of all the species though no drawings of 
the expanded animals are given. In 1851, Dr. William Stimpson 
published a special memoir on the shells of New England with 
two lithographic plates illustrating new species described by the 
author but no expanded animal is shown though many are 
described. In this work published nearly seventy years ago, Dr. 
Stimpson says that conchologists abroad have made us acquainted 
with the molluscan animals of European species, many of which 
are like ours. He further says, "I have myself made descrip- 
tions and figures of nearly all the species found on the New 
England coast, which I shall take some other opportunity to 
publish." These drawings have never appeared. 
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