• OF CONCHOLOGY. 207 



lery of the British Museum, which had been built for the National 

 Gallery, then used for the mineral collections, and at length 

 given up to the zoological collections in 1840, I arranged the 

 species in what appeared to me natural groups, and took care to 

 find out the names that previous writers had given to those 

 groups, and gave the characters of the groups and genera in a 

 ' Synopsis,' which was sold in the Hall for a shilling. This pro- 

 ceeding at first excited the anger of the persons who had adopt- 

 ed the Lamarckian system, some of whom had a vested interest in 

 works written on that system. Knowing but little of the history 

 of science, they persisted in believing that all the groups were 

 creations of my own, and denounced me as the manufacturer of 

 an immense number of useless genera. Thus in Sowerby's 

 ' Manual of Conchology' there are numbers of genera referred 

 to me which were formed when I was a child, or even before I 

 was born, and which often are only quoted to be objected to. 

 Yet that manual is a very useful work for any one commencing 

 the study of conchology, as it contains a very good series of fig- 

 ures of many more genera than are to be found in any other 

 English work on the subject. 



Observing the ignorance that generally existed on the subject, 

 I compiled a list of genera of recent shells, giving the type of 

 each genus. This was pnblished in the ' Proceedings ' of this 

 Society for 1847, and contained in a few pages a condensed ac- 

 count of the labors of most conchologists that had written before 

 that date. This showed how many minds had been occupied 

 with the arrangement of shells, — and also that there were 810 

 well established genera, many having several names, and that 

 only a very small proportion of them had been separated or 

 named by myself. About the same time Mrs. Gray published, 

 for the use of students, etchings of the animals of shells which 

 she had been collecting for my use from various sources. 



The publication of these two works, and the almost simulta- 

 neous appearance of a work ' On the Synonyma of the Genera 

 of Mollusca,' by Hermannsen, gave a great impulse to this study 

 both in this country and the continent. 



Dr. Philippi, during his voyage to Chili, compiled a ' Manual 

 of Mollusca,' chiefly based on my ' List of Genera.' 



Then the Messrs. Adams commenced a work on the ' Genera 

 of Mollusca,' based on the same list, and on the collection ar- 

 ranged according to it in the British Museum. And more lately, 

 Dr. Chenu seems to have felt that the time had arrived when 

 the French conchologists might be inclined to progress beyond 

 the system proposed by Lamarck, and published a 'Manuel de 

 Conchyliologie,' in 2 vols. 8vo, illustrated with figures of several 



