298 TEST ACE A ATLANTICA. 



IV. CANAEIAN GROUP. 



Although far less perfectly explored than the Madeiran Group, 

 the Canaries have had immeasurably more attention bestowed upon 

 them than either the Azores or Cape Verdes. Since the days of 

 Adanson, who touched there on his passage to Senegal, now 

 more than a century ago, they have been visited at intervals by 

 many naturalists, — though often hurriedly and with but feeble 

 results ; and before the sojourn of MM. Webb and Berth elot, 

 whose ' Synopsis,' published in 1833, marks what may be termed 

 the first epoch in the Canarian fauna, the travellers Mange and 

 Ledru, Quoy and Graimard had gathered a scanty contribution 

 towards the commencement of a local catalogue. Meagre and 

 inaccurate as was the enumeration of even Webb and Berthelot 

 (the forty-four species of which embraced a considerable number 

 which had nothing to do with the Canaries at all, having been 

 obtained from bags of dried orchil the 'precise origin of 

 which luas confessedly unknoiun)^ it nevertheless formed a basis 

 on which future collectors were able to build ; and it was by 

 means of this, augmented by a few which he himself met with 

 during a short stay at the Canaries, on his voyage to the West 

 Indies, that M. d'Orbigny so far increased the list, in 1839, as 

 to make it include fifty-four species. 



After the publication of d'Orbigny's catalogue, which con- 

 stituted an integral part of MM. Webb and Berthelot's ' His- 

 toire Naturelle,' no additions to the Gastropodous fauna seem to 

 have been brought to light for about thirteen years, — when M. 

 Shuttleworth described, in the ' Berner Mittheilungen ' for 1852, 

 thirty new species which had been detected by Blauner ; sup- 

 plementing the number by eight others (now in the Museum at 

 Marseilles) from the collection of M. Terver, which however (as 

 having been gathered, like some of the previous ones which had 

 been given to Mr. Webb, from consignments of ' Dyers' moss,' 

 or orchil, the exact country of which was admitted to be uncer- 

 tain) possessed but doubtful claims to be treated as unquestion- 

 ably Canarian. 



In 1856 eight additions were enumerated by Grasset [Journ. 



