THE NAUTILUS. 97 



I have never had the pleasure of seeing a live Razor except- 

 ing on my visit to Wellfleet. 



SPECIES NAMED IN THE PORTLAND CATALOGUE : I, AMERICAN. 



BY WILLIAM HEALEY DALL. 



Daniel Solander, a pupil of Linnaeus, came to London in 

 search of fortune, where he died in 1783, at the age of forty- 

 seven years. 



During his residence he was employed by Sir Joseph Banks 

 to classify the Banksian Collection, afterward included in the 

 British Museum. He also was engaged in arranging and class- 

 ifying the conchological part of the remarkable collection gath- 

 ered by Margaret Cavendish, Dowager Duchess of Portland. 

 This collection is chiefly remembered by its connection with the 

 funeral urn of Alexander Severus, then known as the Barbarini 

 vase, purchased at the sale by the British Museum, renamed 

 the Portland vase, later smashed by a precursor of the militant 

 suffragettes, and wonderfully put together again from its frag- 

 ments by patient work. 



Solander named many nondescript shells in the Banksian 

 Collection, and his manuscript furnished Dillwyn with many 

 names or synonyms for his Catalogue of 1817. 



After the death of the Duchess in 1785, her conchological 

 collection, with other zoological, artistic, and historical items, 

 was sold in the following year, and where Solander had named 

 an undescribed species with reference to a figure in one of the 

 earlier iconographies, this name is published in the catalogue 

 prepared by an anonymous compiler and printed in April, 

 1786. Many of these names were afterward adopted, mostly 

 without acknowledgment, by Bolten, Lamarck, and other later 

 writers. The best known among the American species is our 

 common Unio complanatus. The death of Solander before the 

 publication of any of his new names leaves them dependent 

 upon the Catalogue above mentioned and the citations of 

 Dillwyn. 



A few of the names are accompanied by a descriptive phrase, 



