86 
REVIEWS. 
Popular Bkitish Conchology ; A Familiar History of the Molluscs 
Inhabiting the British Isles. By George Brettingliam Sowerby, F.L.S., 
Author of “ Manual of Conchology,” &c., &c. London : Lovell Peeve. 
1854. With twenty Coloured Plates. Royal 16mo. Price 10s. 6d. 
The work before us is essentially popular in its character and design, and 
may be considered to form one of a series of such works from time to time 
appearing, some of which have already received notice in our pages. 
Useful and attractive, they serve greatly to lessen the apparent repul¬ 
siveness of long scientific descriptions and tedious research, which, in 
former days, were the only means of gaining any insight into nature’s 
works, and which still must continue the single path for scaling the high 
eminence of real distinction in scientific knowledge. 
Mr. Sowerby opens with a very brief preface, in which we are informed 
that he adopts, without hesitation or reserve, the scientific arrangement of 
the classes, orders, and genera given by Messrs. Forbes and Hanley, in 
their great work on British mollusca; having announced which fact, he 
speedily commences his work, proceeding to enumerate the British species 
under each genus, and to interweave with the descriptions many of the 
most interesting details that can be collected in regard to the economy of 
each. Scientific descriptions he has entirely waived, and in their place he 
mentions of each of the species any peculiarity, whether of form or colour, 
that may be calculated to strike the eye; indeed they are mostly those 
signs by which naturalists are wont to discriminate the species as they see 
them cast upon the shore, although not, in many cases, the really dis¬ 
tinctive characters of each. 
In one point, however, which would have been no small assistance to 
his readers, the author has shown a strange neglect—we mean in hardly 
ever alluding to the comparative size of different species, either in the de¬ 
scriptions or figures; some of the more minute are represented in the plates 
by highly-magnified figures, some of the larger on a diminished scale, 
while others appear their natural size. But how, under the circumstances, 
any one previously unacquainted with the subject is intended to identify 
the shells, we are at a loss to imagine. 
Moreover, we must notice another fault in the. work, which might still 
more easily have been avoided; it is the wide separation of the plates 
from the descriptions of the species figured in them. It is our opinion 
that it would have been better to collect them all together at the end, than 
that Plate X., facing page 136, should relate to the shells mentioned from 
page 69 to page 74 ; while Plate XI. might, with more convenience to 
the reader, have taken the place of Plate VI. 
