1 845.] NOMENCLATOR ZOOLOGICUS. 241 



also issued at the same time. The general " Prefatio ' 

 at the beginning of the work was written entirely by 

 Agassiz. It occupies forty-two pages, rendering justice 

 to all his collaborators, who included Prince Charles 

 Lucien Bonaparte, H. Burmeister, Dumeril, G. R. Gray, 

 Herman von Meyer, Milne-Edwards, Strickland, Charles 

 Des Moulins, etc. This " Prefatio ' is dated Neocomi 

 Helvetorum, Febr., 1846, only a few days before 

 Agassiz left Neuchatel for his journey to America. 

 To give an idea of the great labour expended in carry- 

 ing the work to completion, it will suffice to say that 

 it contains thirty-one thousand names of genera and 

 families alone, with bibliographical quotations number- 

 ing thirty-four thousand titles of works or papers on 

 natural history. In all, the number of quotations is 

 more than one hundred and fifty thousand. 



Agassiz had collected for his own private use a 

 catalogue of all known works and detailed memoirs on 

 zoology and geology ; and, before leaving Europe, he 

 made an arrangement with the " Ray Society," of 

 London, to publish it. Professor H. E. Strickland, the 

 successor of Buckland at the Oxford University, was 

 requested to act as editor ; but, unhappily, Strickland 

 was accidentally killed, in September, 1853, while geol- 

 ogizing on the track of the Great Northern Railway, 

 at the mouth of the Clanborough Tunnel, near East 

 Retford, before he had finished the publication of the 

 " Bibliographia Zoologiae et Geologise," based on Agas- 

 siz's manuscripts ; and Sir William Jardine, the eminent 

 naturalist, and father-in-law of the lamented Strickland, 

 completed the editing of the remaining volumes of the 



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