502 HISTORY OF CONCIIOLOGY. 



of the marine Buccina, and a part of the Bivalves. The 

 design was worthy of the man, and is a fine example of un- 

 wearied assiduity, which naught but a genuine enthusiasm 

 could have kept alive. If perchance, says he, a stranger 

 should be told that this man had devoted his years to the 

 dissection of animalcules and snails, it might provoke his 

 contempt or laughter, unless, indeed, the dissector was an- 

 other Harvey, Malpighi, or a Redi ; but I do not vehemently 

 yearn for the applause of any one, having had my reward, 

 for these exercises which were my pleasure and delight in 

 youth, now that I am old they are my solace. And now 

 when I am, from a failure of sight, compelled to use the mi- 

 croscope, and find that by its aid I can again enjoy myself in 

 those studies which have been long denied to the unassisted 

 eye, I rejoice greatly.* — We do love to dwell on the charac- 

 ter of this man. Learned in his profession, and attaining its 

 highest honours, — for he was physician to Queen Anne, — 

 we now see him rcfocating his jaded spirits in the contem- 

 plation of his collections of shells, and enjoying with a rap- 

 ture which minds framed like his only feel, all their beauties 

 and symmetries and singularities; — again we see him ex- 

 amining with a fatherly pride and pleasure, the drawings 

 which his daughters, who stand beside him, had laboured 

 to finish before the duties of the day permitted their beloved 

 parent to retire to his ease and study,f — and at a more lei- 

 sured season, we see him, bent somewhat with age and infir- 

 mities, X anatomizing with the zeal and skill of his youth, 

 the creatures which he loved so well to study, now his keen 

 eye kindling as the thought crosses him, that in this struc- 

 ture there was a ray which shed light on some obscurity in 

 his own frame, — now lost in wonder at some display of a 

 mechanism which can have but one author, while involun- 

 tarily he breathes the hymn, — " Oh altitudo ! In his tarn 

 parvis, atque tarn nullis, quae ratio? quanta vis! quam inex- 

 tricabilis perfectio ! " 



Lister then greatly advanced conchology, by rescuing it 

 from the charge of frivolity, by an unrivalled series of illus- 

 trations of species, by many novel remarks on their habits, 

 by a very complete history of the species of his native land, 

 and chiefly by giving us some excellent essays on the struc- 

 ture and physiology of the Mollusca, which had been ne- 

 glected since the time of Aristotle, for the isolated notices 



* Exercit. An.it. des Cochleis, j>. 2. 



t " The engravings are very elegant and accurate, and were done by his 

 two daughters, Susanna and Anne." — Da Costa, Eton. Conchology, p. 26. 

 J Sec the Preface to the A pp. Hist. Aniin. Ang. 



