16 U.S. NATIONAL MUSEUM BULLETIN 239 



been preserved at all after the original drawings had been made; 

 the rest probably long since have dried out and have been discarded. 

 This leaves 53 species, some of which may still be found. 



Gould: Middle Years 



Relations with louis agassiz. — Louis Agassiz came to the 

 United States in 1846 and immediately became a close friend of 

 Dr. Gould, whom he had known previously through correspondence. 

 Agassiz had been much impressed with the "Invertebrata of Massa- 

 chusetts." In 1848, Agassiz accepted a professorship at newly 

 founded Lawrence Scientific School at Harvard College, where he 

 remained for life, leaving as a monument to his work the Museum of 

 Comparative Zoology, which was founded in 1859. During his first 

 year as a professor, Agassiz and Gould published "Principles of 

 Zoology" in Boston at the firm of Gould's brother: Gould, Kendall 

 and Lincoln. The slim volume went through an English edition, 

 and in Germany it was translated and printed in 1851 and revised in 

 1852, an edition which enjoyed three more printings, the last in 1872. 



"Terrestrial mollusca of the united states." — Amos Binney, 

 one of the founders of the Boston Society of Natural History, was a 

 man of wealth and taste who made the Society and the Boston Athen- 

 aeum the objects of his special interest. He was the one who made it 

 possible for the Society to begin the publication of its records. Once, he 

 offered to the Society about 2,000 species of shells from his own rich 

 collection, provided that other members matched his donation with 

 species not in his collection. Those conditions were soon met, with 

 the result that some 4,000 species were added to the Society's collec- 

 tion. Binney's large and important library was open to all and was 

 deposited with the Society at the time of his death, March 1847, in 

 Rome, where he had gone for his health. He left unfinished a monu- 

 mental work, "The Terrestrial Air-Breathing Mollusks of the United 

 States," accompanied with instructions that his executors appoint 

 someone to complete the task. This was admirably accomplished by 

 Dr. Gould. No expense was spared. The anatomical drawings were 

 prepared by the renowned Dr. Joseph Leidy of Philadelphia, and 

 most of the plates were engraved by Alexander Lawson, rated among 

 the best craftsmen of his time. The result, in 1851 and 1857, was 

 one of the most artistic monographs on American Mollusca ever 

 printed in the United States, rivaled only by another project of 

 Lawson 's, a work on fresh-water mollusks. 



Mexican war naturalists. — During the War with Mexico sev- 

 eral collections of shells were made on the West Coast of the United 

 States and Mexico by officers of the United States armed forces. 



