contribution on the same subject in the Cambridge Natural History, we feel that these lowly organized creatures are at length receiving adequate treatment.
Dr. Paul Pelseneer, in his necessarily larger contribution on the Mollusca, has pursued a similar treatment of his subject, which he has divided into the sections Amphineura, Gastropoda Scaphopoda, Lamellibranchia, and Cephalopoda. It has often been asserted that there were conchologists who devoted their whole study to the outside covering or shell of the species which they collected, and should such specialists find time or inclination to investigate the nature of the living animal itself, Dr. Pelseneer will at least prove a not inefficient guide.
Taxidermy, in some form or other, if not an ancient art, was at least an early practice. Besides the Egyptian mode of embalming to which Mr. Browne refers, we are told by Gibbon, that according "to the voice of history," on the death of the Roman Valerian, Sapor's illustrious prisoner, "his skin, stuffed with straw, and formed into the likeness of a human figure, was preserved for ages in the most celebrated temple of Persia." Animal effigies, for they could be called by no other name, must have had considerable influence in inculcating an early knowledge of Zoology, as well as the living wild animals imported for the purposes of imperial holidays. A Zoology without the practice of Taxidermy or animal preservation, is the science independent of museums and private collections, and valuable as field observations are, and recorded perhaps nowhere with greater alacrity than in the pages of this Journal, students still require both the living and the dead. Moreover, the love of Zoology is not always combined with the qualifications of Midas, and a knowledge of the art is necessary for the collector with a moderate income at home, as well as for the travelling naturalist abroad. Taxidermy is now an art, a thing of joy to the naturalist as he examines those beautiful cases of British Birds in our National
