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The long serpent, covered with the remains of shells, bristling with foraminiferae, was encrusted with a strong coating which served as a protection against all boring molluscs. It lay quietly sheltered from the motions of the sea, and under a favourable pressure for the transmission of the electric spark which passes from Europe to America in .32 of a second.
And we can understand this fact; for in molluscs, even in the lowest members of the class, we do not find nearly so much indefinite repetition of any one part, as we find in the other great classes of the animal and vegetable kingdoms.
Now, the origin of molluscs may be a debated question, but, whatever opinion we hold, all are agreed that molluscs and vertebrates separated from their common parent-stem long before the appearance of an eye so complex as that of the Pecten. Whence, then, the structural analogy?
Whence do they re-appear? Do they, too, take a "summer sleep," like the reptiles, molluscs, and tank fishes? or may they, like the Rotifera, be dried up and preserved for an indefinite period, resuming their vital activity on the mere recurrence of moisture?
Among these were four previously unknown species of mammiferous animals, forty-five of fishes, thirty of reptiles, besides rare kinds of molluscs, polypes, annelides, &c., &c. The rules of the French service required that Freycinet should be summoned before a council of war to answer for the loss of his ship.
As a rule, the lamellibranchiate molluscs have both valves united, and many of them, such as Mya arenaria, stand with the siphonal end upward, as when in a living state. Mastodon arvernensis, third milk molar, left side, upper jaw; grinding surface, natural size.
These just-hatched molluscs, though aquatic in their nature, survived on the duck's feet, in damp air, from twelve to twenty hours; and in this length of time a duck or heron might fly at least six or seven hundred miles, and if blown across the sea to an oceanic island, or to any other distant point, would be sure to alight on a pool or rivulet.
We had little doubt that we should procure other fruit besides cocoa-nuts, while we might also obtain oysters or other molluscs, and perhaps be able to catch fish though we should first have to manufacture hooks and lines or nets of some sort. While Mudge and Tom and I had been talking over these matters, Tillard had been again examining the boat.
In the complex struggle for life it is quite credible that crustaceans, not very high in their own class, might beat cephalopods, the highest molluscs; and such crustaceans, though not highly developed, would stand very high in the scale of invertebrate animals, if judged by the most decisive of all trials the law of battle.
Not very long ago M. Barrande added another and lower stage, abounding with new and peculiar species, beneath the then known Silurian system; and now, still lower down in the Lower Cambrian formation, Mr Hicks has found South Wales beds rich in trilobites, and containing various molluscs and annelids.
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