96 BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON. 



But it is not to their publications that I desire to direct your 

 attention, nor to the reputation, due to their labors, acquired for 

 the United States among foreign investigators. It is to the men 

 themselves, the circumstances of their lives, their struggles in an 

 inappreciative age, their unwearied and self-sacrificing devotion to 

 the study of nature. 



Of course, in an address of this sort, there is only time for the 

 briefest mention of many facts of interest and value to the biog- 

 rapher ; and it would be quite impossible to do even as much as 

 this for all those who have a right to appear on a complete record. 

 So I have confined my attention to some of those who may fairly 

 be considered as pioneers, reserving for another occasion those still 

 active, and many other worthy names. 



Following the example of Coues and Goode in their classifi- 

 cation of the students of vertebrate zoology, I may divide the 

 study of mollusca in this country into three periods, although 

 these are connected b}- many intermediate links. The infancy of 

 the science, witli a Linnaean classification, has no representation 

 in American conchological Hterature, which sprang, full-grown, 

 like Minerva from the head of Jove, from the Lamarckian school 



Parti. Washington, Smithsonian Institution, March 1863; Part ii, June, 

 1S64, Svo, viii, 650, and iv, 298 pp. Also Tryon (G. W.) : A Sketch of the 

 History of Conchology in the United States (Am. Journ. Science, xxxiii, 

 March 1862, pp. 13-32), and List of American Writers on Recent Con- 

 chology, with the titles of their memoirs and dates of publication. New- 

 York, Bailliere, 1S61, 8vo, 68 pp. 



There are also a number of portraits of the more distinguished Con- 

 chologists given in the first and second volumes of the American Journal 

 of Conchology, though these are not always as good as might be wished. 



The above-mentioned works, which contain almost no biographical de- 

 tails, and various dictionaries and encyclopedias have been freely con- 

 sulted for the material used in this address, but a good deal of it has been 

 the result of personal inquiry, letter-writing, and even advertisement in 

 the newspapers for dates and other missing details. To numerous cor- 

 respondents I take this opportunity of expressing m}' thanks for data 

 furnished and which would probably in a few years have been irretrievably 

 lost. 



