parative distribution of land and water. If we examine, for instance, any bed of the primary, secondary, or tertiary formations, it is from the fossil shells which it contains that we can alone judge with any accuracy as to its relative age and nature, or its former position with regard to other strata. And these are questions which are daily acquiring an additional interest, now that the tertiary strata are becoming the subjects of research with regard to the first appearance of man. Without any attempt to discuss what seems at present a very large question with very small data, it may be interesting to notice one or two points in which the details of conchology claim to throw light on the great difficulty-a difficulty which to most minds seems fatal to the assumption of any such antiquity as has been asserted for our race- -the non-appearance, or the very doubtful occurrence, of any actual fossil human bones.

Most readers have heard of the discoveries, by M. Boucher de Perthes in France, and by Mr Prestwich and others in England, of flint implements of human manufacture, in drift gravel, associated with remains of extinct animals, hitherto supposed to have long preceded man. That they are articles of human workmanship can hardly be doubted by any person who has carefully examined their forms. How they came into their present situation and present company, is another question. Mr Prestwich, in a very interesting paper lately communicated to the Royal Society, contends that some of them are icechisels, and records of a glacial climate. But the explanation which, so far as we understand it, is sought to be given of the admitted fact, that no single fossil bone of the maker or owner of these abundant implements is found in the same deposit, is, that fresh water has certain corrosive qualities which would destroy such remains; and

that these are fresh-water drifts is established by the fact that the shells associated with them are all either land and fresh-water shells, or shells of marine mollusks inhabiting the coast, all of which may have been washed up by the tide, or the reflux of an estuarine river. One curious fact which has been put forward by those who claim a very high antiquity for the human race, in explanation of the non-occurrence of human fossils, may be less generally known to English readers. During the Dutch war of independence there took place several "amphibious battles," as Mr Motley calls them, upon the Haarlem See;* and there must also, from time to time, have been considerable loss of life from boat accidents. A few years ago this lake was cleaned out at the expense of the Dutch Government; and orders were given to collect carefully any articles which might be found in the deposit at the bottom. Metal buttons— military buttons-were found in considerable numbers, as well as other trifling relics of a similar kind : but not a single fragment of bone. The theory is, as before, that the bones had been destroyed entirely, even in that comparatively short period, by the action of the fresh water. It is true, that at the time this lake was drained, it communicated by sluices with the Zuyder Zee; but its waters were only brackish it was sufficiently fresh (and here the conchological evidence comes in) to maintain in good health a species of fresh-water mussel (Dreissena polymorpha), which abounds in all the rivers of Europe. If, on the other hand, it should be asked why no human bones are found in marine deposits-sea-water being known to possess antiseptic properties-we are answered that such animal remains as have been obtained in marine deposits are found in ancient sea-beds, implying a greater distance from the shore than primeval man is likely to have ventured.

But why human bones should not occur where those of early landanimals are found (in whose case quite the same objections would seem to apply), is a problem which the advocates for the higher antiquity of human existence have yet to solve. Sir Charles Lyell's forthcoming work on Fossil Man will no doubt treat this difficulty fairly.

The work now before us is confined to British Mollusca, treating Britain at the same time as part of the great European system, the author having personally studed the native conchology of Northern Italy, Switzerland, France, and Germany; and the comparative distribution of the species in other countries than Britain, together with their occurrence in a "subfossil" state, is given in a convenient table at the end; thus serving to connect recent with fossil conchology. The only English works of authority on land and fresh-water shells, are those by Colonel Montagu, Dr Turton (re-edited with additions by Dr Gray), Captain Thomas Brown, and Messrs Forbes and Hanley's admirable history of the British Mollusca, to which last the present writer does full justice in his preface. It has but one objection, but which to many students is an important one,-it is necessarily expensive. A compact and comprehensive handbook of the subject has been still a desideratum with naturalists, which this volume seems calculated to supply. Mr Jeffreys is well-known from his previous contributions to the science, and if his details of the characteristics of each species are as accurate as they are carefully and clearly put together, his book-which, though necessarily compressed, is easily and agreeably written-will prove a very useful one.

It is pleasant, in these days of international gatherings, to find the author stating in his Introduction

See p. 315.

that he found the tastes of a naturalist serve as a pleasant kind of freemasonry wherever he travelled abroad; that, far from being conscious of any of that petty scientific jealousy or rivalry which is perhaps sometimes too readily imagined by a sensitive self-esteem, he "invariably experienced the greatest kindness" from foreign naturalists, known to him only by name. Even the Austrian passport system relaxed at the sight of a collectingbox.

"In the spring of 1850, I was travelling through Lombardy, when, during a mid-day halt at Rovigo to bait the horses, I could not resist taking a walk outside the barriers, accompanied by our to me in assisting to collect shells. At courier, who had been previously useful the end of an hour or so we returned, but found at the barrier-gate an Austrian official, who demanded our passports. This was at first a poser, as I had left in the carriage, at Rovigo, the document which was at that time so indispensable All explanations appeared to be unavailfor passing through the north of Italy. ing, when the courier pulled out of his pocket a collecting-box full of live snails, and at once satisfied the smiling official, by showing this proof of our innocence, with the remark, Ecco, Signore, i nostri passaporti !'”—Introd., p. lxxiv.

Something has been said of the exceeding fruitfulness of ocean. But every spot of earth is also more or less inhabited. Many of our readers will have seen and admired the Kentish bank of wild-flowers, admirably modelled in wax, in the eastern annex of the New Exhibition. They would have had no idea, perhaps, until they studied it there, of the wonderful variety of floral life concentrated in so small a space. But the animal life which such a spot might contain is even more wonderful still. "There is probably not a square foot of land," says Mr Jeffreys," either in a cultivated or uncultivated state, that is not inhabited by mollusca of various kinds." There are said to be above

two thousand species of land-shells alone; seventy-four belong to our own island. On this said Kentish bank, at early morning, or on a dewy evening, the diligent observer (who has 66 eyes" in the sense of Mrs Barbauld's story) might find some half-dozen species at least with little difficulty. Helix Cantiana, the “Kentish” snail, so called because first noticed in that county, with its rosy-red lip and delicate blush, crawling slowly over the leaves and flowers; Helir hispida, with its downy covering, like a little hairy ball; Helix pulchella-which the French call la mignonne-a pretty pale-grey shell, whose inhabitant is very shy, and draws in its shining black eyes (if eyes they be) on a very slight disturbance; hanging on again to a violet-bud, glistening in the dew, like a pendant to a maiden's ear, is another with a harder name-Cochlicopa_lubrica; the minute tower-shaped Pupa umbilicata, carrying her (or his? the point is curiously doubtful) young family about on a fold of the shell, like gypsy babies-" a kind of marsupial arrangement;" a Clausilia, again, so called from the curious spring-door inside the opening of her shell, which she can shut in a moment when alarmed by the approach of a centipede or vagrant ant-both shell and door forming a piece of spiral mechanism which Archimedes might have studied with delight, had there been any conchologists in his days. This Clausilia, be it observed, wears her heart on her wrong side, and has the spiral "whorls" of her shell twisted from right to left," in the wry uncommon way," as old Morton calls it, "whereas all other shells, whether of the land or sea, have a quite different turn-viz., from the left hand to the right, thereby observing, as it were, the sun's motion on this north side of the Equator." *

It may be observed that Mr Jeffreys has given no English names of the varieties of British land

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shells. In truth, there are no English names which it could be any possible use to give. To insert mere translations of the Latin names of the several species, as has been done in some previous works, is plainly a waste of ingenuity, especially when we have such translations, or quasi- translations, as "Dull Snail" for Zonites nitidulus; Cycle for "Cyclas;' or when Balaa is englished into "Moss Snail," for no conceivable reason either in its appearance or habits. There is, in truth, very little to be said in defence even of much of the scientific nomenclature of conchology. What, for instance, can be made of such a name for a genus as Zua? Dr Leach, who has the honour of the invention of this and some other names, is said to have picked the words at random out of a Greek Lexicon, written them on slips of paper, and then to have put them into a hat, from which a friend was asked to draw, when the name which came first to hand was adopted for the genus or species which was in want of one. They are sufficiently inappropriate to make the story quite credible.

Any researches amongst British land-shells have probably hitherto been confined, in the case of the majority of our readers, to their garden; may be described, in fact, in unscientific language, as "hunting for snails." The Snail is at any rate pretty well known to all of us, and may stand in some sort as the representative of his class. What we do know of him is not altogether favourable. He is not the sort of animal in whose case we are commonly inclined to act upon Captain Cuttle's maxim-"When found, make a note of." Those who do find him seldom retain him long enough for that purpose. If the discoverer be a person of strong mind and habits of decided action, he "scrunches " him forthwith under his heel upon the gravel walk. If he be rather tender-hearted, and of scrupulous

conscience or if there be a lady in company who has æsthetic objections to scrunching-he pitches him over the wall into his neighbour's garden, like a conscientious landlord who will allow no publichouse in his parish. On the whole, the snail is an unpopular character; known to be extremely mischeivous, and having no engaging personal qualities to tempt us to condone his offences. In a very different light do some of the old naturalists regard him. If their observation of his disposition and habits is at all to be credited, he is sadly misappreciated by his brother animal, man. He is quite a gentlemanly character; slightly luxurious and self-indulgent, epicurean in his morals and philosophy, but not at all the grovelling glutton that we take him for. We should certainly have inferred, as a modern writer expresses it, "that the sensations and passions of the molluscans are of a cold and low character." Decidedly, we should have said, from slight personal experience, that a snail was "cold ;" and we thought his aspirations hardly rose higher than a cabbage. We had considered him only a step or two above a periwinkle; for whom, and for others of his class, even good Dr Paley confesses he "has been sometimes at a loss to find out amusement." The doctor need not have been uneasy about it in the snail's case, at all events. He is, it is true, in the opinion of most naturalists, very near-sighted, and rather deaf; but this may be, after all, a mere misapprehension on their parts. He does not look upon matters from their point of view, of course; but he may see and hear a good many things which they don't. At any rate, these are aristocratic infirmities, and they do not seem to interfere in the slightest degree with the snail's enjoyment of life. "Veneri et Cereri otiosus vivit," says Müller, speaking of one of the one of the

family," he lives at home at ease in gallantry and feasting;" saving for the omission of Baccho in the description (which is all in the snail's favour), we might suppose that it applied to the life of a Roman exquisite in the days of Horace, instead of to the Clausilia, who are a very respectable branch of the Helicide, or Snail family. Read what Mr Jeffreys, in the work before us, quotes from M. Moquin Tandon, the great French conchologist

"Les mollusques ont des ruses et des industries, des sympathies et des inimitiés, des guerres acharnées, et des amours bizarres. Malgré leur apathie apparente, les mollusques sont des êtres qui ne manquent pas d'intelligence. Leur vie privée et leur vie commune nous montrent des détails extrêmement

curieux."-Introd., xlv.

Oken is, if possible, still more enthusiastic in his admiration :

"Circumspection and foresight appear to be the thoughts of the bivalve Gazing upon a mollusca and snails. snail, one believes that he finds the prophesying goddess sitting upon a tripod. What majesty is in a creeping snail, what reflection, what earnestness, what timidity, and yet at the same time what firm confidence! Surely a snail is an exalted symbol of mind slumbering deeply within itself!" *

We may be inclined, in these days of rapid locomotion, to despise the snail (whose best pace is calculated at a mile in seventeen days, including stoppages), as a stay-at-home sort of personage, rather behind his generation. Charles Lamb would have admired him for this very independent characteristic, as he does one of his near relatives, the mussel :

"Glued to his impassable rocky limit, two inches square, he hears the tide roll over him backwards and forwards (as the Salisbury long coach goes and reknows better than to take an outside turns in eight-and-forty hours), but place a-top-on't. He is the owl of the sea, Minerva's fish-the fish of wisdom."+