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My Dear Sir, As fossil shells are more numerous, and generally occur in a better state of preservation than any other of the organic remains, they have become one of the most interesting ob­jects for geological research, and there is such an exact conformity in the structure of many of these fossils with the living genera, as to render it in the highest degree probable, that the habits of their animals were also similar. By availing ourselves of these analogies, some circumstances attending the distribution of fossil shells may be observed which have hitherto escaped notice, and if you should find them to be sufficiently interesting, or likely to open a new door for enquiry, I beg that you will submit to the Royal Society the following observations on the fossil remains of the Molluscae. Pliny, in describing the shell fish which was supposed to yield the Tyrian die, has observed, ‘lingua purpuræ longitudine digitali, qua pascitur perforando reliqua conchylia; and Lamarck says, that all those molluscæ whose shells have a notch or canal at the base of their apertures, are furnished with similar powers, by means of a retractile proboscis ; and in his arrangement of invertebral animals they form a sec­tion of the Trachelipodes, with the name of ‘Zoophages.’ Whether all these Trachelipodes are possessed of the same predaceous powers of boring into hard substances, and whether some of them may not subsist chiefly on dead animals, my own observations have led me greatly to doubt; but this notch or canal is made for the protrusion of a trunk, which is formed to answer the same purposes as the respiratory organs of a Gastrobranchus,* and may serve at once to dis­tinguish a carnivorous species. The following fossil genera belong to this section of the Trachelipodes—Conus, Oliva, Ancilla, Terebellum, Seraphs, Cypraæ, Ovula, Volvaria, Marginella, Voluta, Mitra, Terebra, Buccinum, Harpa, Monocerus, Purpura, Cassis, Cassidaria, Strombus, Rostellaria, Triton, Murex, Ranella, Pyrula, Fusus, Cancellaria, Potamides, and Cerithium.

XXV. On fossil shells. By Lewis Weston Dillwyn, Esq. F. R. S. In a letter addressed to the Right Honourable Sir Humphry Davy, Bart. Pres. R. S