500 HISTORY OF CONCHOLOGY. 



but which were really beyond the province of human in- 

 quiry ; hence the discussion wherefore shellfish were defec- 

 tive in this and that organ, without the slightest effort to 

 ascertain whether that deficiency was a fact ; and hence, in 

 short, the reason that his volume contains not a single fact 

 additional to the stock of knowledge in his own province, 

 for we do not find that he has " treated of the formation of 

 shells in a manner more philosophical than could have been 

 expected at such a period," as Maton and Racket have as- 

 serted.* But we have no wish to depreciate Bonanni, who, 

 as we have already mentioned, was a man of learning and 

 repute, and it is not discreditable to an author that he is 

 affirmed not to have anticipated his age : we have drawn 

 his character as we think fairly, and it is a fair representation, 

 too, of the bulk of conchologists of his time, who obviously 

 had little other object in the study than to indulge their love 

 of virtuosoship. 



Philippo Bonanni and Dr. Martin Lister were co-equals in 

 the date of the publication of their works,f but in character 

 they were men of remote eras. Lister was not less learned 

 than the Jesuit, but of that he made no parade, and if he 

 had drunk of the logic of the schoolmen, his tutored mind 

 had seen its folly, for we never find him indulging in disqui- 

 sitions about things inscrutable or useless. Full of the me- 

 dical knowledge of the day, Lister betook himself, following 

 the bent of his genius, to a patient anatomy of the animals 

 which tenant and construct the shells that had won his ad- 

 miration, and allowing for the state of anatomy then, we do 

 not hesitate to say that his " Exercitationes" deserve to rank 

 beside those of Poli and Cuvier.^; They are replete with 

 accurate descriptions, not unmixed it is true with error, and 

 some things he had overlooked and mistaken, but to mark 

 these as blots on his diligence or reputation were uncandid 

 and unfair to him who leaves the olden ways and deviates 

 into a new country, in which he has to open up the roads. 

 In every page Lister proves himself a laborious and observ- 

 ant anatomist and naturalist ; while his disquisitions and 

 digressions relative to the leaning of his discoveries on the 



* Lin. Trans, vii. 136. They but echo the words of Sir J. E. Smith in 

 his preliminary address to the Linncean Society. See his Tracts, p. 102. 



t Lister's works were published between the years 1669 and 1697. Even 

 the great Bentley allows that he was " learned." — See Monk's Life of 

 Bentley, i. 130. 



X Willis was the first who anatomized an invertebrate animal with white 

 blood (1672) : he has given an anatomy of the oyster, which, however, is 

 very imperfect. — See Cuv. Hist, des Sc. Nat. ii. 387. 



