Historical Account ofTestaceological Writers. 175 



We now come to the proper place for adverting to what was 

 effected in the science of Testaceology by the immortal 



LINNJEUS. 



From his great and comprehensive genius, this, like the other 

 branches of natural history, was destined to receive an entirely 

 new aspect: under his reforming hand it passed from confusion 

 and incongruity to lucid order and simplicity ; and though the 

 improvement, as happens with all the most useful results of 

 human labour, was, even under his pen, progressive, it reached a 

 precision and facility of application to which former systems can 

 scarcely be said to have approached. 



There has been a very general belief that less attention was de- 

 voted by Linnaeus to the history and arrangement of the Testacea 

 than to any other order of the animal kingdom, and that he even 

 thought their external coverings, or shells, scarcely worthy of be- 

 coming subjects of scientific distribution. AVhatever may have 

 been the origin of this belief, it certainly does not appear to us 

 to be warranted by any examination of the Systema Naturce itself, 

 not even of its earliest editions. The original state of that extraor- 

 dinary work (and it was in this that Linnaeus first touched on Tes- 

 taceology) did not indicate, perhaps, less happy reformation of 

 method with regard to the Testacea than to other parts of orga- 

 nized nature; its deficiencies were those from which few other 

 portions of the performance were exempt, and which were natu- 

 rally to be expected in all, on the first sketch of so grand and so 

 heterogeneous a subject. The great aim of the author being sim- 

 plicity, he seems to have at first over-reached it rather than to 

 have fallen short, and the consequences are obvious. His origi- 

 nal genera of shells were too few, being only eight in number, viz. 



1. Cochlea. 



