LECTURES 



ON THE SHELLS OF THE GULF OF CALIFORNIA. 



BY PHILIP P. CARPENTER, OP WARRINGTON, ENGLAND. 



The pearl fishery carried on by the Spaniards in the ''Sea of 

 Cortez" during the 17th and 18th centuries, bore testimony to its 

 richness in molluscan life. To obtain the "pearl oysters," eight 

 hundred divers were regularly employed, and the annual value of the 

 exports was $60,000. So exhaustive was this fishery that it was 

 gradually abandoned ; and the very limited trade between the gulf 

 ports and the Old World did not lead to more than the most fragmen- 

 tary knowledge of its marine fauna. A few of the shells of Acapulco 

 had been brought home by Humboldt and Bonpland as early as 1803 ; 

 and collections had been made at various stations on the Central 

 American coast by Captain Beechy and Lieutenant Belcher, R. N., in 

 the voyage of the Blossom, 1825-1828 ; by MM. Du Petit Thouars, 

 La Perouse, and Chiron, in the Venus, 1836-1839 ; and in the Sulphur, 

 by Sir E. Belcher and Mr. Hinds, in 1836-1842. The shells of 

 Panama and the coast of Ecuador, closely related to those of the Gulf 

 of California, had been obtained in great abundance by Hugh Cuming, 

 esq., w T hose vast collection of shells is not only by far the largest in 

 the world, but, through the generous courtesy of its owner, the most 

 accessible to students of every nation. Scarcely any shells, however, 

 had been collected in the gulf, and indeed the records of scientific 

 voyages, rich as they are in additions to our knowledge of fresh forms, 

 rarely afford satisfactory data as to the fauna of any particular district. 

 Unfortunately, it has been the custom, in the accounts of these voy- 

 ages, only to describe the (supposed) new species ; besides which, 

 the locality marks, even if accurately noted at the time, are exposed 

 to many chances of error before the information is made accessible to 

 the scientific world.* Whether the shells of the gulf most resembled 

 those of Panama or those of California, (which Avere described by Mr. 

 Conrad from collections made by the late Mr. Nuttall in 1834,) was 

 still a matter of doubt up to the period of the Mexican war in 1846— '8. 

 When Major Rich and Captain Green visited Mazatlan, they became 

 acquainted with a Belgian gentleman, M. Reigen, who had been em- 

 ploying himself in making a vast collection of the shells of that region. 

 This collection ultimately passed into the hands of a merchant who 



*The works of Mr. Hinds are, however, in every respect reliable, in consequence of the 

 great skill and accuracy of the lamented author. 



