(5 INTRODUCTION. 



collector to endeavour to diffuse Linnaeus's views respecting the true affinity of the Trilobites 

 among his readers, and to prove " that the Conchologists have no longer any reason to 

 consider the fossil which had hitherto been known by the name of a Coiichifce triloU rnyosi 

 as a part of their science." The author of the treatise referred to, Ch. Fr. Wilkens, 

 announced his name in the following year, and published his opinions under the title of 

 ' Information respecting Rare Animal Petrifactions.' He treats of the numerous Trilobites 

 in his collection with much cleverness, although with an unnecessary prolixity, and arrives 

 finally at the well-founded result, that the name of EntomoUthus branchiopodis cancnformis 

 marinus ought to be given to them. But the appearance of this treatise in an unknown 

 periodical, was not calculated to attract attention, or procure credit and appreciation for it, and 

 it is questionable whether it would ever have come to the knowledge of subsequent authors, 

 if J. Imm. Walch had not particularly referred to it in his ' Natural History of Fossils.' It 

 decided Walch's opinion, however, and as this diligent writer brought togetlier everything 

 that had hitlierto been written on the Trilobites, his elaborate work became an authority 

 on which succeeding authors might rely with certainty in the labyrinth of conflicting 

 opinions. Being convinced of the unfitness of tlie names hitherto used, either owing to 

 their incorrectness or their length, he proposed a new designation for them, and was the 

 first who called these animals Trilobites, a designation, which, with the exception of Dalman, 

 has been retained by all the subsequent authors, and therefore, being the oldest and by 

 no means an unsuitable name, will also be retained by us. Walch, however, was not 

 sufficiently a practical zoologist to be able to support Wilkens's \icws by additional reasons, 

 and indeed he generally speaks more of the ideas of others than of his own opinions on the 

 subject, and seems inclined to consider the 0/iisci as the animals most nearly allied to the 

 Trilobites. Henceforth the opinion of the affinity of the Trilobites with the Mollusca was 

 nearly buried in oblivion, and would probably never have been known, if its memory had 

 not been revived again nearly fifty years afterwards by a zoologist, from whom, possessing as 

 he did an accurate knowledge of the Articulata, one could least of all have expected it, 

 namely, by Latreille. The next writer after Walch, John Beckmann, calls them Onisci, without 

 any circumlocution, and Count v. Kinsky, in a letter to the Baron von Born, uses the name 

 given by Linnaeus, while M. Th. Brunich, on the other hand, uses Trilobus, Walch's designation 

 in an abbreviated form, and J. K. Gehler retains it in its original form. Finally, the opinion 

 of A. Modeer, who thought that he could recognize the structure of a tube beetle, (Coccinella) 

 in the Trilobites, at least in the heads of liattus and Olcmts, which he described, was new 

 but erroneous. 



SECTION IV. 



Such was the state of our knowledge of the Trilobites, when the great political events 

 which took place at the conclusion of the last and the commencement of the present century 

 rendered all serious efforts for the advance of science impossible. During the period 

 extending from 1793 to 1820, we only meet with three short observations on the Trilobites, 

 of which the first is contained in Blumenbach's 'Illustrations of Natural History;' the 

 second in Parkinson's ' Organic Remains of a Former World ; ' the third in Leonhard's 

 ' Taschen-buch fur Mineralogie ;' in which the Baron v. Schlotheim describes a new series 



