REVIEWS. 
49 
this world. The idea seemed to be a sort of intuitive perception, and each 
and all have applied themselves to find out the history of the various species 
that inhabit our globe—to find out from them their local habitation and 
to give them their names. This task, though a difficult and tedious one 
and not to be accomplished as the result of one life-time, nor perhaps of a 
century of life-times, still has its own rewards, and each one must feel a 
pleasure as he places one or more rings to the cable that is to bind the now 
scattered families of the earth together. 
Although much has been done, with these intentions, since the days of 
the immortal Linne or Cuvier, still we hold that the day is yet far distant 
when the work is to be completed, and we would still work on. Your 
work may and will obtain data for theories; but the time for the latter 
has not yet come. Under these impressions we welcome the work before 
us, not as being one by any means that sets at rest the question of affini¬ 
ties or kindred organizations ; the “ ifs” and “ buts,” the “ unsettled con¬ 
siderations,” of such men as Blainville, Cuvier, Milne Edwards, and of our 
authors themselves, forbid us to do this ;—but we welcome it as a true record 
of what has been hitherto accomplished in this line of investigation, and 
because it sets before us in a clear and lucid way the present state of the 
Molluscean science. 
We do not pretend to have studied the whole of the seven numbers that 
lie beside us; but we have opened them here and there, and found ourselves 
pleased as we discovered gaps filled up by the discovery of some oftentimes 
minute creature, which, in ignorance of its existence, we were vainly endea¬ 
vouring to do without; and at other times we have been disappointed as we 
found this and that genus out of what we thought its right place, and in 
that position that doubtless satisfied Messrs. H. and A. Adams; these doubts 
and fears proving that by no possible means could either we or they find, 
under the present circumstances, a mutually agreed on spot for it to rest in. 
One such class we would particularize, the Heteropoda. A truly wander¬ 
ing race this—spending its time a marauder on the high seas ; not one of 
them formed for crawling on the earth, nor yet for creeping on the bed of the 
sea. They pass their time floating listlessly on its surface (Ianthina), sup¬ 
ported, perhaps, in some slight degree, by their curious float, which is regarded 
by some malacologists as a modification of an operculum (a body present in 
Macgillivria, Atlanta, &c.),but by Clark as a membraneous vehicle of the con¬ 
tents of the ovarium and matrix—or swimming rapidly about (Atlanta), dis¬ 
porting themselves towards nightfall,scanning every object in their reach, and, 
when fatigued, anchoring themselves to the first thing they can lay hold of, 
by a small sucker which is attached to the fore part of the ventral fin. This 
