138 Dr. Maton's a7id Mr. Rackett's 



LISTER. 



There is no name in the annals of natural history that deserves 

 to be mentioned with more respect than that of our countryman 

 Dr. Martin Lister, to whom, in this historical catalogue, we have 

 given the place appropriate to the time of the publication of his 

 Synopsis, or general work on shells : but, as this was far from 

 being the first in order of his publications, we shall beg leave to 

 preface our account of it with some remarks on his earlier produc- 

 tions. We may be permitted, perhaps, to be less concise on the 

 subject of this celebrated writer than we have shown ourselves 

 with respect to most of his predecessors, Avhen it is considered that 

 he was the father of British Testaceology, and that in the labour, 

 accuracy, and extent of his works, as well as in the philosophical 

 spirit with which they were executed, he has far surpassed all 

 the writers of that period. His figures, both in point of number 

 and faithfulness, are with reason still held in such high estimation, 

 that no person attached to this branch of natural history can ad- 

 vance in it without the constant use of them, nor without finding 

 them preferable for reference to many more splendid engravings 

 which have succeeded them. 



The earliest essays of Lister on the subject of the Testacea ap- 

 peared in the Philosophical Transactions, that general and useful 

 receptacle for accidental and detached discoveries in natural sci- 

 ence, for the preservation of which the Royal Society was insti- 

 tuted, and to which our indefatigable countryman was one of the 

 earliest and most valuable contributors. His first communication 

 was (anonymously) on the subject of heterostrophous shells. At 

 this time he was living at York, whence some subsequent com- 

 munications were dated, and where he made many of those ob- 

 servations relative to zoology and fossils which formed an impor- 

 tant 



