REVIEWS. 
109 
space will not permit ns to enter into details, or to write a history of all 
that has been said and done for conchology or malacology, from the time 
that Aristotle, with unwearied industry, and ever-to-be-admired ingenuity, 
tracked out for himself a path in this neglected desert, down to our days, 
when this desert has become a fruitful field, and names like Cuvier, 
and Blainville, Milne-Edwards, Muller, Owen, and our ever-to-be-lamented, 
but never-to-be-forgotten, Forbes, with a whole host of others, stand like 
beacon-lights, showing us the broad, distinct track which each and all have 
left behind them, some few shining steadily, with an enduring brightness— 
while other of the lights but flicker and die; and others still shine, like 
the light-house on a barren rock, but to show us where danger lies, and to 
warn us off the coast. For, truly, to again quote from Adanson, the details 
of the study is, by no means, childish play; far from it; but the way 
thereto is a thorny one, and beset with much difficulty. 
In our opinion, the fate of malacologists and conchologists must be 
very like, indeed. Finding fault, as they almost invariably do, with the 
systems of their predecessors, they found some new one of their own, which, 
J n its turn, shall, perchance, be stigmatized by some fresh candidate for 
the withering laurel, as so much ingenious trifling, supposing he gives it no 
harder name. 
Now, it must be well known to our readers that, since the year 1757, 
when the “ History of the Shell-fish of Senegal” was published, and even 
before that date, naturalists, at least the major part of them, have, in 
the study of shells and their inhabitants, fallen into one or the other of two 
extremes—by either describing the shell as if it had no inhabitant, or else 
describing that inhabitant as if it had no house of its own wherein to live 
in; and as each successive naturalist glides slowly into either of them, he 
is called (as in the former case) a conchologist, or (as in the latter) a mala- 
cologist. To the latter of these divisions the author of this volume 
most unquestionably belongs; one extract will prove this, if it be not 
already known. Under the head of Littorina rudis, in page 342, we find 
the following synonymic list:— 
L. patula, Brit. Moll., iii., p. 36. 
L. tenebrosa, Brit. Moll., iii., p. 39. 
L. saxatilis, Brit. Moll., iii., p. 43. 
L. fabalis, Brit. Moll., iii., p. 49. 
L. palliata, Brit. Moll., iii., p. 51. 
L. gonaria, L. nidissima, L. jugosa, L. neglecta, Auct. 
and the following reason why it is given—“ To describe the above, 
which are the pseudo-species of authors, would be to say, that the organs 
of all, both external and internal, do not vary in the slightest degree in 
