Proceedings 73 
The Developement of Conchology. 
By Conchology I mean the collecting of snails, and the var- 
ious enquiries to which snail-collecting leads, Though my own ex- 
periences have been mainly with land and freshwater snails, what 
I have to say applies equally to all the divisions of the class which 
we call Mollusca. I hope to show that Conchology is a very much 
more serious study than most people think. 
By the developement of Conchology I mean the progressive 
changes which have come over the study since men first began 
to collect snails; and in particular certain extensions of Conchology, 
certain improvements in its methods which will be of great im- 
portance to the future of Science, if it is possible to induce a 
sufficiently large number of naturalists to work at them. 
My first task is to try to show that the study of Conchology may 
become in the immediate future a matter of first-class importance. 
Fifty years ago Darwin showed that there was good reason 
to doubt the view which till then generally prevailed, that the 
various species of living beings had been distinct since their origin. 
I am careful to say only that this view generally prevailed; of 
course it is true that others before Darwin had had their doubts, 
and I think that the real value of his work lay in the fact that 
it was sceptical; it showed that there was good cause to doubt 
what men in general had never doubted before. I do not hesitate 
to say that there are many things intimately connected with life 
and existence which men take for granted now, but will be com- 
pelled in the near future tosubmit toa searching sceptical criticism. 
Even if the subject matter of the Darwinian theory had been 
of no importance in itself, it would have gained importance from 
being thus used to challenge the general opinion of mankind. 
But not only is it true that it was thus used, and successfully 
thus used, but also it is in itself a matter of the closest impor- 
tance to all of us. There is no department of human thought or 
action upon which the doctrine of evolution is without influence; 
in many cases it is a powerful solvent of ancient ideas. And there 
is no field in which Darwin’s ideas can be fairly tested, except 
the field of Natural History. 
If the diversities of the animal body have been evolved, there 
is no apparent reason why the mind should not have been evolved 
