350 Bibliographical Notices, 



them was entirely neglected. This province of zoology was there- 

 fore appropriately denominated Conchology. 



At the end of the last and the beginning of the present century, how- 

 ever, the first step towards a better state of things was made by Adanson, 

 Poli and Cnvier ; the latter, about this period, published anatomical 

 descriptions of twenty or thirty species of Mollusca, belonging to various 

 families, principally of the Gasteropoda. It was soon found that the 

 study of the animals would introduce many new elements into the classi- 

 fication of the Mollusca, and Cuvier, Lamarck and De Blainville each 

 published systematic works, in which the characters of the larger 

 groups were derived as far as possible from the structure of the few 

 molluscous animals with which the authors were then acquainted, 

 whilst those of the minor groups were taken almost entirely from the 

 shells. Of these systems, that of Lamarck was the one most gene- 

 rally adopted, probably from its being accompanied by descriptions 

 of a large number of species, and it is still in use with but little mo- 

 dification by many conchologists, especially in France. For many 

 years, in fact, the Lamarckian system was followed almost exclusively, 

 and the only zoologists who attempted the introduction of any new 

 views into the classification of the Mollusca were Dr. Gray and 

 Mr. Swainson, the former in a slight sketch published in the 

 Synopsis of the British Museum for 1838, 1841 and 1842, the latter 

 in his somewhat imaginative work which forms part of Lardner's 

 * Cyclopaedia,' 



But during this period of comparative stagnation in the progress 

 of systematic malacology, numerous naturalists were engaged in col- 

 lecting observations which were one day to change the whole face of 

 this department of zoology. In our own country, Montagu, Johnston, 

 Alder and Hancock, and the author of the work now under consider- 

 ation, published descriptions of many of the animals of the British 

 Mollusca; a few continental naturalists performed the same good 

 office for the species inhabiting the seas bordering their countries, 

 and the excellent naturalists attached to the numerous French voy^ 

 ages of discovery contributed a mass of valuable observations upon 

 exotic species, illustrated in most cases with excellent figures. 



The numerous and valuable observations contributed by these 

 authors to the natural history of the Mollusca soon mtroduced a 

 great change into the systematic arrangement of these animals, in 

 which, notwithstanding the efforts of Cuvier and others already re- 

 ferred to, the conchological element still greatly predominated. It 

 was found that shells positively identical in character might serve as 

 the habitation of animals presenting such great differences both in 

 their form and their anatomical construction, that they required to be 

 placed not only in different genera, but even in genera which in a 

 philosophical classification must be separated from each other by a 

 wide interval; — thus, in 1847, Dr. Gray published a list of about thirty 

 genera of Gasteropodous Mollusca, which it is impossible to distin- 

 guish from the examination of the shell alone, whilst the animals 

 present well-marked differences, and there is no doubt that subse- 

 quent observations will add considerably to this list. 



