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Beyond lay a straight narrow channel of transparent water, blue from a faint reflected light, with smooth, sculptured walls of rock, clear from mollusca, rising on each side of it. Level lines of mimic waves rippled monotonously upon it, as if it was stirred by some soft wind which we could not feel. You could have peopled it with tiny boats flitting across it, or skimming lightly down it.
Your common man has no conception of the zeal that animates a scientific investigator, the fury of contradiction you can arouse in him. It is the odium theologicum in a new form. There are men, for instance, who would gladly burn Professor Ray Lankester at Smithfield for his treatment of the Mollusca in the Encyclopaedia.
And so definitely and precisely marked is the structure of each animal, that, in the present state of our knowledge, there is not the least evidence to prove that a form, in the slightest degree transitional between any of the two groups 'Vertebrata', 'Annulosa', 'Mollusca', and 'Coelenterata', either exists, or has existed, during that period of the earth's history which is recorded by the geologist.
Thus studied, history is the noblest of all sciences, since it treats of the highest of God's creations; but studied as a mere congeries of facts, all sciences are alike worthless; and from the mousings of the mere antiquarian to the dredgings of the student of the shelly coverings of the Mollusca, all end in naught.
Its food is principally the soft mollusca common in the Arctic seas, and its flesh is not esteemed except by the Greenlanders.
These four great branches of the animal world are the vertebrata, mollusca, articulata, and radiata. Comparative anatomy found in Cuvier a student who appreciated its importance and revived its efficiency and honors.
For in the zoölogical system also these main-types of the invertebrates do not stand one above the other, but by the side of each other: at most, the radiata, the worms, the mollusca, and the articulata, take their places above the zoöphytes. Only within the main-types, in the classes, orders, etc., do differences in rank take effect; and even here, not without exception.
These three lower beds are covered by an unconformable mantle D of stratified sandy earth, including many pebbles of quartz, pumice and phonolite, land and sea-shells. M. d'Orbigny has been so obliging as to name for me the twenty species of Mollusca embedded in the two gravel beds: they consist of: Volutella angulata, d'Orbigny, "Voyage" Mollusq. and Pal. 2. Voluta Braziliana, Sol 3.
The Mid-Atlantic swarms with pelagic Mollusca, and, in moderate depths, the shells of these are constantly mixed with the Globigerina ooze, sometimes in number sufficient to make up a considerable portion of its bulk. It is clear that these shells must fall in equal numbers upon the red clay, but scarcely a trace of one of them is ever brought up by the dredge on the red clay area.
While the new red sandstone shews comparatively scanty traces of organic creation, those in the oolite are extremely abundant, particularly in the department of animals, and more particularly still of sea mollusca, which, it has been observed, are always the more conspicuous in proportion to the predominance of calcareous rocks.
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