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Your careful account of the temperate parts of South America interested me much, and all the more from knowing something of the country. I like also much the general remarks towards the end of the volume on the land molluscs. Now for a few criticisms.

Indeed, the larva, of many of the headless Molluscs have a mouth and eyes, and there is a very common type of larva the trochosphere in the Mollusc world which approaches the earlier form of some of the higher worms. The Molluscs, as we shall see, provide some admirable illustrations of the process of evolution.

Half an hour later they were being gently wafted towards their previous day's landing place, where cocoanuts were obtained, fish caught, and a large addition made to the number of pearl shells, which were laid on the sand in the bright sunshine, it being decided that on a large scale the task would be too laborious to open the great molluscs one by one.

Her body, burning with a slow fever, drew away as it felt his touch, it shriveled like those timid molluscs that shrink and hide at the least touch. She was awake. He could not hear her breathing; she seemed dead in the profound darkness, but he fancied her with her eyes open, a scowl on her forehead and he felt the fear of a man who has a presentiment of danger in the mystery of the darkness.

The best of modern prizes may be puny in comparison with those which caused distress to the giant molluscs of the age when the Ichthyosaurus, Plesiosaurus, and Pterodactylus were the aristocrats of the animal world.

In the great class of molluscs, though we can homologise the parts of one species with those of another and distinct species, we can indicate but few serial homologies; that is, we are seldom enabled to say that one part or organ is homologous with another in the same individual.

I do not doubt that this process of improvement has affected in a marked and sensible manner the organisation of the more recent and victorious forms of life, in comparison with the ancient and beaten forms; but I can see no way of testing this sort of progress. Crustaceans, for instance, not the highest in their own class, may have beaten the highest molluscs.

"By the way, talking about the whale," said Jack, "all naturalists seem agreed, and we ourselves are convinced from our own observation, that its throat is very narrow, and that it can only swallow molluscs, or very small fishes what, in that case, becomes of the history of Jonah?" "It is rather unfortunate," replied Becker, "that the whale has been associated with this miracle.

Further, the great mass of seemingly-voluntary acts in such creatures as insects, worms, molluscs, are considered by physiologists to be as purely automatic as is the dilatation or closure of the iris under variations in quantity of light; and similarly exemplify the law, that an impression on the end of an afferent nerve is conveyed to some ganglionic centre, and is thence usually reflected along an efferent nerve to one or more muscles which it causes to contract.

In this state it is well fitted to retain moisture and to absorb all soluble substances, as well as for the process of nitrification. The bones of dead animals, the harder parts of insects, the shells of land- molluscs, leaves, twigs, &c., are before long all buried beneath the accumulated castings of worms, and are thus brought in a more or less decayed state within reach of the roots of plants.