96 
REVIEWS. 
continents, and never traversed by a bark, excepting the light pirogue 
of the savage? But we must leave imagination, and return to our vo¬ 
lumes. Space would not allow us to note all the passages worthy of the 
reader’s study—for there are many such ; in some we find difficult sub¬ 
jects so clearly and simply explained as to make it worth one’s while 
to commit the passages to memory; and we think to a lecturer the 
perusal of this work would be of great importance, as it would ex¬ 
hibit original information popularly yet scientifically given. 
In the introduction our author says, that, when speaking of scien¬ 
tific matters, he never allowed himself in the slightest degree to sacrifice 
the substance to the form, being as anxious to act the part of the 
zoologist as rigidly as if he had been engaged in compiling a work for 
his brother zoologists. "While we grant that he has generally been 
very successful in so doing, yet there are some passages in which we 
think there is a slight departure from the above-mentioned intentions ; 
and perhaps the most unscientific writing in the whole of these two vo¬ 
lumes is the author’s description of the treasure of the Sacaviron, a 
narrow channel which separates Meule from Ile-aux-Oiseaux, in the 
Archipelago of Chausey. We have described in glowing language a 
great many very common things. We are told that there we would find 
the Buccinum, and the Bissoa, and the Turbo, as if, forsooth, species and 
genus were all one. But if species and genera are confounded, so 
are species and families. For we read that the rocks are “ clothed with 
a mamillated stratum of simple Ascidians, a species of Molluscs which 
live and die without ever having moved from the same spot.” Well, 
in these days of embryological discovery, this latter statement is too bad, 
and we wonder what the author could have been dreaming of! As early 
as 1835, some years before M. de Quatrefages went to Chausey, the 
tadpole larva of the Ascidiadse had been discovered and described; and 
the truth here is so much stranger than fiction, that its narration would 
have heightened the interest that attaches to these curious creatures. 
Again, M. Quatrefages does not write as if he knew—which he surely 
must—that the Botrylli are compound Ascidians. He says :— 
“ From the ceiling hung down, like so many girandoles, transparent Clavellinae, and 
the bright Botrylli, whose conglomerated masses exhibit the colours and translucerice of 
the agate. The smoother stones were all covered with compound Ascidians, which were 
spread over the surface in shining green, brown, red, or violet patches, interspersed with 
markings of geometrical regularity, which severally indicated the different family groups 
of these singular beings.” 
We are told that the Thetys is a kind of a sea-slug, belonging to the 
Gasteropoda, but that it has no test—it would have been better if the 
translator had given us the word “ shell” instead of test, which is one 
very likely to mislead. When the author writes about his favourite 
Annelids, then we drop our pen—there is no use keeping it in our hand 
to mark passages that display little ignorances, for there are none of 
them. Here we revel among descriptions of Sabillas and Terebellas, 
and of Matildas and Herminias. 
