370 Ohio Sliells. 



at my love of a fine and well woven speculation, I will plant a 

 loaded battery at such a breach in knowledge, and just say, no 

 man has ever been quick in any thing without a mind that grasp- 

 ed effects, and originated causes. Bacon speculated, Newton, 

 Locke, Galileo, Davy, Dalton, and every man who will wave a 

 flag over the ruins of the future. 



OHIO SHELLS, 



JVotices of Western Botany and Conchology. — By C. W. Short, 

 M. D. and H. HuLBERT Eaton, A. M. (R. S.) 



Monograph of the Bivalve Shells of the River Ohio. — Translated 

 from the French of Professor Rafinesque, by C. A. Poulson, Esq. 



The interesting paper under this head, which we find in the 

 Transylvania Journal of Medicine and the Associate Sciences, 

 published at Lexington, Kentucky, deserves to be transplanted 

 from the medical journal we have named, that it may be more 

 generally accessible to the lovers of natural history. The oppor- 

 tunities which naturalists enjoy, who are residents of the western 

 country, of personally investigating — and in place — all those ob- 

 jects of so much interest to the now numerous body of inquirers, 

 must always give them great advantages over their colaborators 

 in natural science, who, bound to the Atlantic shores, by various 

 urgencies, must study, and of course describe at the greatest dis- 

 advantage, objects that are often transmitted to them in a de- 

 fective state, and that are accompanied by the ambiguous rela- 

 tions of the inexperienced persons who transmit them; for such 

 we may generally suppose them to be, taking it for granted that 

 resident naturalists choose always to announce their discoveries, 

 rather than put their friends at a distance to the unnecessary 

 trouble of doing it in a less effective manner. Remembering how 

 exceedingly deficient we were once ourselves, it is by no means 

 with the intention of speaking slightly of the imperfect attempts 

 of the zealous uninitiated, to convey their views, that we make 

 these remarks: the elementary course of geological instruction 

 we have adopted for this Journal, is a proof of our solicitude to 

 favour, as much as we know how, the incipient efforts of all 

 lovers of nature. We have rather intended to mark our de- 



