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PREFACE. 



A THOUSAND years ago it was reniarked by one of the early fathers 

 of natural history, that " much labor yet remains, and much is 

 likely to remain ; nor will opportunities of adding something be 

 wanting to him who shall be born after a thousand ages." Multum 

 adhuc restat operis, multumque restabit ; nee ulli nato post mille 

 secula prcBcludetur occasio aliquid adjiciendi. 



He that brings to its place in system, an individual hitherto un- 

 discovered or unnoticed, produces an additional testimony of the 

 unbounded power of HIM, who in all His works is maximus in max- 

 imis, maximus in minimis ; mightiest in the mightiest, and mightiest 

 in the minutest. 



The materials of natural history, in their various compartments, 

 are of such huge accumulation, as to occasion no small difficulty in 

 the formation of distinctive catalogues, founded on scientific and 

 classical distribution. 



The illustrious writers of the French school have come boldly 

 forth, and broken the trammels by which the .science of Conchology 



