PRESIDEXT's address SECTION D. 335 



Forbes wrote an admirable account of the " Bathymetrical Distribution 

 of marine Testacea on the Eastern coast of Australia." 



This fragment suggests how great was the loss which science 

 sustained through the waste of material carried to London. These 

 explorers found the British official authorities indifferent and 

 apathetic. London had no Lamarck to grasp the opportunity, to value 

 what had been gathered with such difficulty and danger, and to infuse 

 his zeal into others for the realisation of knowledge from the raw 

 material. 



The naturalists of ihe "Endeavour," the "Fly," and the 

 " Rattlesnake" had laboured hard, and accumidated important collec- 

 tions. These seem either to have been thrown into the vaults of a 

 museum, or to have been dissipated among fanciers and curio-mongers. 

 The plants gathered by Captain Cook's party were lately published 

 after a hundred years of neglect. Those brought home by Dampier 

 in 1688 and 1699 lay undetermined for an even longer period. 



The shells of MacGilli\Tay seem to have passed into the hands 

 of Cuming. Hugh Cuming was an illiterate sailor, whose history 

 shows him as a man of sti'ong character, a master organiser, and one 

 born to success. He aimed to have the finest collection of shells in 

 the world, and he reached it. Unfortunately his plans did not regard 

 the advancement of science, and the strong man wastes no energy on 

 aught but the attainment of his object. 



For pui-poses of sale or exchange an unnamed shell was of less 

 value to him than one named, so names were needed for his wares. 

 More time for determination and description was required by careful 

 writers. But worse authors quickly supplied names good or bad, 

 and doubtless better submitted to Cuming's dictation as to what 

 constituted a different species. 



So the leading conchologists of his generation in England, Gray, 

 Woodward, Forbes, Hanley, and Carpenter had little or. no dealings 

 with Cuming. Gray, indeed, seems to have quarrelled outright. The 

 naming of Cuming's huge collection fell to weaker men — ^Reeve, the 

 Sowerbys, and the Adams. It has happened that these renamed the 

 same species twice or thrice. The least amount of work necessary to 

 carry the name satisfied them. 



Though " the exact locality, depth, and character of habitat of 

 each species of mollusk taken" by MacGillivray " were carefully noted 

 at the time of capture," these valuable field notes were despised by 

 the dealer into whose hands they passed, and failed to attain 

 publication. 



The name of Strange is one that occurs frequently as a collector 

 of ti-pe specimens of Queensland shells. Frederick Strange was a native 

 of Aylsham, Norfolk, England. He was an early visitor to Brisbane, 

 a friend and probably pupil of MacGillivray. He collected vigorously 

 round Moreton Bay. In June, 1852, he returned to England after 

 fourteen years' absence, and sold the large natural history collection 

 he had gathered. The shells were puixhased by Cuming. On his 

 return to Brisbane he renewed his zoological work by fitting out a 

 small vessel to collect along the Barrier Reef. On 15tli October, 1854. 

 he landed on Percy Island No. 11., in company with Mr. Spurling, a 

 conchologist, and Mr. Walter Hill, afterwards I)irector of the Botanic 

 Gardens of Brisbane, and first Colonial Botanist of Queensland. Hill 



