lusca he clearly saw the impropriety of making the presence or absence of the shell an ordinal character; and he knew, vaguely it may be, the affinity between the bivalvular Mollusca and the Tunicata. "For what"-we translate his words-" are the Testacea but Mollusca furnished with a shell, and what are Mollusca but Testacea destitute of it? There is the most exact agreement of the tenants of the univalve shells which are called Helices with the naked slugs; and an agreement not to be overlooked of bivalves with the Ascidia; and the very error of our predecessors, who said that slugs were merely snails which had crept out of their shells, proves their near affinity. Besides the insensible but evident transition of nature from the naked Limax to the testaceous-passing from the former, which at most has the mere rudiment of an internal shell to the latter by means of the Buccinum (Limneus glutinosus), which conceals its membranous shell under a fleshy mantle, supports plainly our opinion. Therefore I do not doubt that a future age will join together the naked slugs and the shelled snails, which authors have separated into different orders." "If we wish," he writes in another place, "properly to know and discriminate natural objects, they must be considered in every point of view and in all states, so far as human imbecility will permit. The attainment of knowledge is thus indeed rendered more difficult, but at the same time more pleasant and accurate; genera indeed are multiplied, but by this way only, if by any, can species ever be determined. This is the alpha and omega of our labours, since systems and methods and genera are arbitrary and framed by the narrow limits of our knowledge. Nature acknowledges one division of created bodies only-the living and brute matter-spurning for the most part the arrangements of systematists into classes and orders, families and genera, and her productions are often so affined that their limits can never be strictly fixed. Characters derived from the interior and exterior structure of bodies deceive us not solely in the higher divisions; and even the manner of life and the mode of propagation do not afford any certain distinctions either in those races which are visible or in those which are invisible to the naked eye. There is, therefore, only one family, and one Father of all, who has marked with a constant character all species whatever from the Monad to the turret-bearing Elephant, and has distinguished Man alone with a reasonable soul." * The celebrated Pallas was another who at this period had * See the Præfatio to his Verm. Ter. et Fluv. vol. i. 1773 obtained a glimpse of the true relations of the Mollusca as a class even clearer than Müller, but he did not pursue the subject; and as his slight incidental notice, though it might have originated inquiry in a predisposed mind, was not otherwise of a nature to produce any effect, so the pains of Geoffroy and Müller were equally unproductive. The authority of Linnæus prevailed everywhere. The force of his genius having swept away all previous systems, there was no other safety for a naturalist, than to take refuge in the Linnæan ark, which floated on the surface proud amid the ruins, -the systems of his contemporaries also sinking one after another in the waters of forgetfulness; for "Method, carrying a show of total and perfect knowledge, has a tendency to generate acquiescence.' His disciples were distinguished by their enthusiasm in the pursuit of nature, and their love of their master; and the facility with which they found their discoveries were registered, and the easy nature of the discoveries which sufficed to give them a certain reputation, requiring naught but zeal, opportunity, and a knowledge of the "Systema" not difficult to be acquired, riveted their attachments. In England nothing was tolerated that was not according to the letter of Linnæus: his works were a code of laws which, like an act of Parliament, was to be interpreted verbally, and the spirit of them was unseen or overlooked. Under his reforming hand, Conchology having passed "from confusion and incongruity to lucid order and simplicity," the slightest attempt to alter this order was treated as an attempt to replunge us into the chaos whence he had brought us, and further improvement or alteration was declared to be futile, since the "beauties" of the Linnæan "must perpetuate its pre-eminence."§ Were it shown Misc. Zool. pp. 72, 73. Lug. Batav. 1778. "Such a kind of natural soveraignty there is, in some men's minds over others: which must needs be farr greater, when it is advanc'd by long use and the venerable name of a Master."-SPRAT, Hist. R. Soc. p. 69. "He owed his influence to various causes; at the head of which may be placed that genius for system, which, though it cramps the growth of knowledge, perhaps finally atones for that mischief by the zeal and activity which it rouses in followers and opponents, who discover truth by accident, when in pursuit of weapons for warfare. A system which attempts a task so hard as that of subjecting vast provinces of human knowledge to one or two principles, if it presents some striking instances of conformity to superficial appearances, is sure to delight the framer; and, for a time, to subdue and captivate the student too entirely for sober reflection and rigorous examination."-SIR J. MACKINTOSH. § Brown's Elem. of Conchology, pref. i. In a similar strain Dr. Turton writes:-"The stream of time, which is continually washing away the dissoluble fabrics of other systems, passes without injury by the adamant of that, from the very subsidiary station the animal was made to occupy in this system, there was a fear attention should be drawn from the object most worthy of it, we were seriously told that the animal, even could it be procured, which was doubtful, would never present those "permanent and obvious points of distinction" indispensable in the application of a system meant to be practical. Wherein does the animal differ, it was asked in a tone of triumph, signifying that reply was impossible,-" wherein does the animal differ from an unshapen mass of lifeless matter when coiled up within its shelly habitation? And how are its natural shape and appendages to be examined, but by the knife of an anatomist ?"* Were it proved, what indeed was most palpable, that species of opposite habits and habitations were huddled together under a common head, it was answered that to derive characters from such particulars was contrary to axiom and unphilosophical; and if it were demonstrative that the class of Testacea, as a whole, was constituted of heterogeneous disparates, as for example when Pallas indicated the difference between this class and the Serpulæ,-what then? Nature gloried in variety and oppositions, and was herself systemless, as if it were possible to believe that He, who made every thing in wisdom and order, had shook His creatures from His hand, with the same wanton unordered profusion that the poet has represented the jocund May, flinging the flowerets from her teeming lap. Such were the futile reasons by which this System was upheld, and so firm was its despotism that, until within these twenty years, there was little or no relaxation on its hold of public opinion; and its evil effects are too evident in the superficialness of the productions which emanated from this school. Even in France the Linnæan system soon became little less predominant under the leading of Bruguiere, but the regard the French paid to it was of a less slavish character than it Linné." Some Account of the Life of Sir C. Linné, p. 42. The Rev. Mr. Burrow is equally imaginative in his language, and grandiloquent in his prophetical judgment.-Elements, pref. vi. &c. * Da Costa, Elem. Conchology, 7-24; Lin. Trans. vii. p. 177; Brown's Elements, p. 10. "Nature does not seem to have observed any system, and an artificial one will ever be attended with anomalies. Whatever method therefore most readily leads to the subject under investigation, is certainly the best, and in this case it is of small importance where that subject is placed, or how far it is removed from others to which it seems to bear a general resemblance." MATON, in Pulteney's Life of Linnæus, p. 238.—Sir J. E. Smith also allows himself to talk of the "irregularities of Nature," as an apology for some inconsistencies in the zoological works of Linnæus.-Tracts, p. 136. had assumed in Britain. Bruguiere, though a Linnæan in principle, carried forward in some degree the system of his master by intercalating many new and obviously necessary genera; and he was otherwise a conchologist of higher attainments than any England could at that period boast of.* He cannot be said to have promoted Conchology in any very sensible degree, but he made no effort to arrest it, or detain the science at the stage where Linnæus had left it. Nor indeed is it perhaps possible to stop the march of any, however trivial the branch of science, to perfection. Like the operations of Nature in her living productions ever tending to maturity, there are periods of acceleration and delay, and causes may for a season induce a sickly weakness that waits long for a remedy, but come at last this will. Conchology was now in her sickly time,-nevertheless in a state of constant advancement. Ellis, Baster, Bohadtch, Pallas, Müller, Forskäl, Solander, and Otho Fabricius, all of whom might have seen Linnæus in the flesh, and were his immediate successors, drew attention to the naked molluscans in particular, whose curious variety was enticing and provocative to further quest; Herissant, Scopoli, Bruguiere, and Olivi, described many species with their animals, and entered too into physiological questions which it was worthy reasonable men to solve; Knorr, Davila, Martini and Chemnitz, Schröter, Born, Pennant, Da Costa, and Martyn, set forth at intervals volumes of figures more numerous in species, and more correct than had been hitherto attempted; and the minute or * He made a distinct class of the Star-fish and Sea-Urchins, under the name of "Echinodermata;" but it is a proof of his ignorance of its real relations and connections, when he made that class the connecting link between the soft mollusca and the testacea.-Tab. Syst. des Vers, p. vi. Mr. Swainson asserts that Bruguiere borrowed his improvements from Mr. George Humphrey, F.L.S., the chief commercial conchologist of his time. Mr. Humphrey published his work in 1797—“Museum Calonnianum -"wherein he arranged the Testacea upon an entirely novel and very remarkable plan,' -a plan which "served as the main foundation, although unacknowledged, for the subsequent system of Bruguiere, if not of Lamarck and Cuvier." "It was, therefore, not in France, but in England, that the revolution against the meagre conchological school of Linnæus first originated."-Treat. on Malacology, p. 15. Mr. Swainson's enthusiasm in the cause of a too much neglected conchologist has surely led him greatly to overestimate his merits. Mr. Humphrey did not introduce any new principle into his system; and, so far as I can discover, his sole merit was in indicating several good genera. These were not defined. Lamarck, and more so Bruguiere, may have derived some hints from Humphrey; but it seems very absurd to suppose that Cuvier was in any way influenced by his labours. "In common hands, analysis stops at the species or the genus, and cannot rise to the order or the class." So it was with Humphrey and Bruguiere; and so it was not with Cuvier. microscopic species, which notwithstanding their littleness, have played a most important part in the revolutions of our globe, were well illustrated in the great work of Soldani, and more partially in the less laborious works of Plancus, Boys and Walker, and of Fichtel and Moll. Yet this array of names only proves a wider spread of the study,--the students may have been, and we think were, mediocrists,—many of them were simply iconographists and collectors. We can remember no discovery by which to distinguish the period, for the development or improvement of an artificial system, the accumulation of species, and their more accurate discrimination, though points of considerable importance, are not sufficiently so to mark an era. Perhaps the most curious and interesting discovery that was made in it is, that of the capability of the snail to reproduce its tentacula, eyes, and head, when these have been cut off,-the phenomena of which singular reintegration were amply elucidated by the experiments of Spallanzani, Bonnet, and others. The first to raise us from this enchained slumber was Cuvier. Before this great naturalist entered the field, Poli, a Neapolitan physician, had indeed anatomized with admirable skill the bivalved mollusca of his native shores, and had constructed a new arrangement of them from the characters of the animal alone, but partly from the political position of Europe, partly from the very expensive fashion in which Poli's work was published, and its consequent extremely limited circulation, and in part also from the partial application of his system and its didactic character, the erroneousness of his general views, and the novelty of his nomenclature, we cannot trace its influence either as diffusive or propulsive of conchology. The result of Cuvier's labours was happily very different. In 1788, when he was scarcely nineteen years of age, circumstances fixed Cuvier * It is most especially necessary to except from this remark John Hunter, but his labours and views were not published, and were not appreciated. "John Hunter was a great discoverer in his own science; but one who well knew him has told us, that few of his contemporaries perceived the ultimate object of his pursuits; and his strong and solitary genius laboured to perfect his designs without the solace of sympathy, without one cheering approbation."-D'ISRAELI's Literary Character, i. 146. See Abernethy's Physiological Lectures, p. 193, for a list of the Mollusca anatomized and exhibited in Hunter's Museum, also p. 217, 263. + I borrow the following synopsis of Poli's classification from Deshayes, never having seen Poli's work: it is limited to the Conchifera, which are named MOLLUSCA TESTACEA SUBSILIENTIA. Family I. Mollusks with double siphons and a foot.-Genera-Hypogea, Peronæa, Callista, Arthemis, Cerastes. |