2 RE3BNT AUSTRALIAN CONCHOLOGY. 



that we owe the recognition and description of one-sixth 

 of its species to Reeve, and one-twelfth to A. Adams, either 

 alone or in conjunction with H. Adams, Reeve or Angas. 

 This criticism of the private worker by men who have the 

 resources of a State at their back is unfair and ungenerous ; 

 and leads one to recall with amusement the not yet for- 

 gotten early blunders of the critics themselves. 



The Second Series of the Manual of Conchology haa 

 reached its twenty-second volume and its completion will 

 place the classification of the land-shells — Subclass 

 Pulmonata- — on a similarly sound footing. The late Geo. 

 W. Tryon, Junr., in a preface dated January 1st, 1885, 

 makes the following declaration as to his basis of classifica- 

 tion : — " The classification of the ' Pulmonata ' will be 

 essentially that exhibited in the third volume of my 

 ' Structural and Systematic Conchology ' ; modified, never- 

 theless, as to minor details and chiefly by the introduction 

 of additional groups. In the arrangement and synonymy 

 of the species, the late Dr. Louis Pfeiffer's ' Nomenclator 

 Heliceorum Viventium,' 1878, will be my principal guide, 

 and I will endeavour so to intercalate the more recently 

 described species as to preserve the essential features of 

 that monumental work. I shall not follow him bhndly, 

 however. I shall consider the opinions of the special 

 students of each local fauna as entitled to great weight, 

 and I shall constantly subject questions of synonymy 

 to the test of comparison of specimens in the admirable 

 collections of terrestrial shells in the Museum of the Academy 

 of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia." 



Mr Tryon lived to complete four volumes, the fiist 

 dealing with the Testacellidse, etc., the second with the 

 Zonitidse, and the third and fourth with various orders of 

 the Helicidse, when death put an end to his labouis. 



Fortunately in February, 1888, a fit successor to con- 

 tinue this important work, was found in Mr. Henry A. 

 Pilsbry, Conservator of the Conchoiogica) Section of the 

 Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. Mr. Pilsbry 

 completed the Helicidae in Volume IX., and took this 

 opportunity to make an index and a revision of all orders 

 and sub-classes described by his predecessor. Twenty- 



