96 PRESIDENI’S ADDRESS—SECTION D. 
Meanwhile a considerable collection of shells obtained on Cook’s 
voyages came into the possession of Mr. G. Humphery, of Lon- 
don, well known in his day as a ‘‘commercial conchologist” as 
well as a writer on conchology, who sent it to Danzig. This 
collection was studied by Zorn, who had not arrived at the 
Linnean standpoint, and who described about 179 species under 
vernacular names only. The collection was afterwards lost sight 
of, and complications arose in consequence. Thus, like other 
branches of Australian zoological knowledge which date from 
the Pre-Victorian Era, with the exception of entomology, con- 
chological knowledge begins under a cloud. Professor von 
Martens (7) has heroically endeavoured to wrestle with the 
difficulties that have arisen; and after much trouble has 
come to the conclusion that about 109 species of them are 
rightly attributable to Australia, and, if so, were probably ob- 
tained on the first voyage. 
It is important to notice that both the collections and the 
published results which accrued from the visits of the various 
non-British expeditions during the Pre-Victorian Era were in 
every case but one very much more important from a zoological 
than a botanical point of view. This seems surprising, as 
ths non-British naturalists were visitors merely, whose time 
was short, and whose collecting operations had to be carried on 
at a few more or less distant spots, and at no great distance 
from the coast. By no possible chance, though the collectors 
were expert and enthusiastic, could their collections be ex- 
haustively or representatively Australian on a large scale. 
Their collecting was necessarily more or less superficial, with- 
out being locally exhaustive. The collectors of different ex- 
peditions sometimes visited the same locality, and then the 
collecting might be overlapping in character. 
When non-British botanists acquired Australian botanical 
collections, they found the way already prepared for them to 
name their specimens and to describe the non-descripts without 
creating complications. From the study of far larger and more’ 
representative collections than they possessed, Robert Brown 
had not only laid the ground plan of Australian botanical know- 
ledge, but had filled in a good deal of the detail. 
But in zoological matters it was quite different. No 
zoological Robert Brown had already prepared, or seemed likely 
to prepare, the way from the study of better collections than 
non-British zoologists themselves possessed. They were strongly 
attracted by, and deeply interested in, the Australian fauna. 
The prevalent opinion among them might very reasonably have 
been that of Lesson, one of the French naturalists, who visited 
Sydney and Bathurst in 1824, and who wrote :—‘ The English, 
(q) ** C mchylien von Cook’s Reisen,’’ Malak. Blitt, xix., 1872, p. 1. 
