MINEUAL CONC'HOLOGY. 9 



Letter from Mr. James De Carle Sowerby, on the subject of the 

 French Edition of Mineral Conchology.* 



Camden Town, July 27, 1839. 



Sir, 



It is hardly possible that I should remain silent 

 after seeing, from the strictures you have made on the French 

 edition of my ' Mineral Conchology,' the great interest you 

 feel in the cause of that class of authors, whose works are si- 

 milar in character to this publication. And feeling practically 

 that unless some protection be afforded them by at least their 

 brother authors, and the scientific portion of the public, they 

 must soon be reduced to that small number who are suffi- 

 ciently opulent to pay for the satisfaction they experience 

 in their own minds, in being able to contribute to the ad- 

 vancement of knowledge, I beg to thank you for the man- 

 ly way in which you have advocated what appears to me to 

 be the tnie and lasting interest of science, — the encouragement 

 of original publications, in opposition to the specious but 

 fleeting advantages which cheap piracies possess. Such 

 works only tend to convert what would otherwise be a flow- 

 ing stream, into a stagnant lake, by cutting off the springs 

 which had given it life. 



Mons. Agassiz has, however, proposed to revise and cor- 

 rect the work in question ; a proposal which, if can-ied fully 

 into effect, would certainly be beneficial to the study of Geo- 

 logy : but in many instances it will be found that his transla- 

 tion pei-petuates the eiTors of the original. 



The following short history of the work will explain why 

 revision and correction are necessary, and also account for 

 the inequalities (justly observed by M. Agassiz) which occur 

 in the execution of the different parts of it. This statement 

 is not offered as an excuse for the errors, many of which have 

 been corrected in the later volumes, but to show that such er- 

 rors were mostly unavoidable at the time the work was in pro- 

 gress, and also as being likely to interest all who take a part 

 in the discussion you have excited. 



The first number of the ' Mineral Conchology ' was pub- 

 lished by the late Mr. James Sowerby, in June, 1812, two 

 years before Lamarck's ' Systeme' appeared. The author be- 

 ing much more partial to the pictorial department, referred 

 the principal part of the text to his two eldest sons (myself 

 and Mr. G. B. Sowerby), while he executed the plates wholly 

 himself: and he continued his task regularly, even during a 

 long and painfiil illness, vmtil within three or four days of his 



*Mag. Nat. Hist. Vol. iii. n. s. p. 418. 



