[From the American Journal of Science and Arts, Vol. XXXIII, March. 1862.] 



A SKETCH 



HISTORY OF CONCHOLOGY IN THE UNITED STATES. 



The history of Conchology in America is necessarily brief — 

 yet it is adorned with names which compare favorably with 

 those of any of its cultivators in the old world. Indeed, where- 

 ever Conchology is studied, the works of Say, Lea, Conrad, the 

 Binneys, Adams, Gould, and numerous other of our authors, are 

 referred to as standard authorities. With so much persever- 

 ance and skill have our Conchologists worked up certain genera 

 of shells, that almost all new species in those genera, are placed 

 in their hands for determination and description. 



In the earlier years of our scientific history there were almost 

 no libraries, authentically named specimens, or well informed nat- 

 uralists in America ; hence the student was compelled to rely 

 entirely upon himself; and his descriptions, published necessa- 

 rily in an obscure manner, were inaccessible to, or general^ neg- 

 lected, or entirely unnoticed by Europeans, who continually re- 

 described the same species under different names, without regard 

 to the prior claims of American authors, and frequently without 

 the slightest attempt to study out their writings.f It was during 

 these years of neglect that the science of Conchology was first 

 cultivated in this country. Its votaries were men whose whole 

 hearts were in their work, and they were continually urged by 

 a noble ambition to new discoveries and achievements. 



It must be acknowledged that notwithstanding adverse cir- 

 cumstances, the field was inviting to our naturalists ; they were 

 working in a new world, a vast continent whose varied and pro- 

 lific natural objects, scattered as they were, over the broad ex- 

 panse, from the ice-bound confines of the polar sea to the tropi- 

 cal regions of South America, had rarely or never met the eyes 

 of civilized man. The abundance of material to be worked up, 



* List of American writers on Recent Conchology. With the Titles of their 

 Memoirs and dates of publication. By George W. Tryon, Jr., Member of the Acad- 

 emy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. 8vo. 68 pp. Bailliere ; New York, Lon- 

 don, Paris and Madrid. 1861. 



f See the chapter "Of the ignorance and neglect of American Labors in Zoolom/, 

 exhibited by European Naturalists." Binney's Terrestrial Mollusks, i, p. 56. 



