Miscellaneous, 259 



honestly attempted, by the disregard of our scientific literature and 

 by the shameful ignorance that pervades all classes in matters con- 

 cerned with Australian geography. 



An apt parable is the story of two children dividing a piece of 

 bread and jam, of whom tbe elder licked off the sweets and handed 

 to the younger the dry bread for his share. What credit may 

 attach to the naming of species is appropriated by some Europeans, 

 who leave the drier crust of classification, anatomy, distribution, &c. 

 to be laboriously worked out by others. 



To support these charges by particulars, I will wander no further 

 than the source whence this discussion arose. Some years ago I 

 prepared an account of the Land-Molluscan Fauna of British New 

 Guinea, in studying which I encountered several unfigured descrip- 

 tions by Mr. Smith. A London writer, who has at his command 

 the ablest men, the wealthiest museums, and most complete libraries 

 in the world, cannot appreciate the difficulties under which an 

 American, and still more an Australian, student pursues his work 

 in a city far from civilization's centre, poorly equipped with books, 

 specimens, or apparatus, and alone from fellow-workers. If 

 Mr. Smith, who can identify almost any known shell by a glance at 

 an authentic specimen in his official custody, could realize how the 

 head of one student of his writings has ached in reading and 

 re-reading one of his brief unfigured diagnoses and in endeavouring 

 to match it with a specimen in hand, he would never, I believe, 

 again issue an unfigured description. Chance, however, later threw 

 in my path authentic examples of Mr. Smith's unfigured Papuan 

 species ; and, though I consider it unfair for one writer to cast upon 

 another the burden of completing his work, I published drawings of 

 each of them. 



My satisfaction in reducing this fauna to order was short-lived, 

 for Mr. Smith then produced a series of papers in which a con- 

 siderable number of New-Guinea species were named and described 

 without figures or precise localities. Now I do not regard the 

 publication of these descriptions as a mere formal rite whose celebra- 

 tion invests British-Museum specimens with the rank of type ; but 

 I receive them as an intended aid to Australian students in the study 

 of their local fauna. Yet a perusal of them does not enable me to 

 project a distinct image of any of the forms dealt with; nor am I 

 alone in this infirmity, for one of the most striking of these shells 

 has since been renamed, described, and figured as an unpublished 

 species by a German author, Dr. Kobelt. Several of the species are 

 relegated to the genus Helix, which, in the sense Mr. Smith em- 

 ployed it, contains about three thousand species ; he also draws 

 specific limits narrower than do some other writers. For the pur- 

 pose of this argument it is granted that, in adopting broad genera 

 and narrow species, the best course is followed ; but it will then be 

 obvious that he who contrasts a novelty with thousands instead of 

 scores of co-generic forms, and he who sees five species where 

 another distinguishes three, is under the greater necessity of giving 

 full details than he who adopts the alternative course. Concholo- 



