Historical Account ofTestaceological Writers. 175 
We now come to the proper place for adverting to what was 
effected in the science of Testaceology by the immortal 
LINNiEUS. 
From his great and comprehensive genius, this, like the other 
branches of natural history, was destined to receive an entirely 
new aspect: under his reforming hand it passed from confusion 
and incongruity to lucid order and simplicity; and though the 
improvement, as happens with all the most useful results of 
human labour, was, even under his pen, progressive, it reached a 
precision and facility of application to which former systems can 
scarcely be said to have approached. 
There has been a very general belief that less attention was de- 
voted by Linnaeus to the history and arrangement of the Testacea 
than to any other order of the animal kingdom, and that he even 
thought their external coverings, or shells, scarcely worthy of be- 
coming subjects of scientific distribution. Whatever may have 
been the origin of this belief, it certainly does not appear to us 
to be warranted by any examination of the Systema Nature itself, 
not even of its earliest editions. The original state of that extraor- 
dinary work (and it was in this that Linnaeus first touched on Tes- 
taceology) did not indicate, perhaps, less happy reformation of 
method with regard to the Testacea than to other parts of orga- 
nized nature; its deficiencies were those from which few other 
portions of the performance were exempt, and which were natu- 
rally to be expected in all, on the first sketch of so grand and so 
heterogeneous a subject. The great aim of the author being sim- 
plicity, he seems to have at first over-reached it rather than to 
have fallen short, and the consequences are obvious. His origi- 
nal genera of shells were too few, being only eight in number, viz. 
1. Cochlea. 
