404 JOHN ROBERT WILLIS—GANONG. 
ART. X.-JOHN ROBERT WIGiLTs: 
THE FIRST NOVA SCOTIAN CONCHOLOGIST. 
A MEMORIAL. 
His Lire; His List of SHELLS oF Nova Scotia, AND 
HIS OTHER PUBLISHED WORKS. 
Edited by W. F. Ganone, A. M. 
INTRODUCTION, 
Ir has been for some time past a source of much inconvenience 
and regret to some at least of the students of the Mollusca of 
Eastern Canada and New England, that the lists made by John 
Willis have been quite inaccessible. These lists have been 
frequently quoted by Gould, Stimpson, Dawson, Dall and others, 
and must form the basis for any future work of a similar char- 
acter in this region. Yet they are not found in any of our large 
libraries, scientific or otherwise; neither the British Museum, 
nor those at Washington, at Philadelphia, at Boston, at Cam- 
bridge, at Ottawa, at St. John, nor at Halifax possess them, and 
so far as careful and systematic inquiries have been able to dis- 
cover, there are but four or five copies of the principal list in 
existence, and all of them are the property of private individuals. 
There is no question as to its value, and the call for its preserva- 
tion is imperative. Published as it was, privately and on a single 
large sheet, it was given to the world under conditions the worst 
possible for its preservation, and it is not surprising that it has 
been almost totally lost even from the carefully-guarded shelves 
of our largest libraries. Such lists can be sure of a permanent. 
existence only in the pages of a regularly issued periodical of 
