104 



CONCHOLOGY. 



with a shell, or possessing portions of shelly matter, 

 concealed under its skin, or in its folds, to defend 

 certain organs most liable to external injury from their 

 exposed situation. Such of our earlier naturalists as 

 merely studied an arrangement of shells, detached 

 from their parent architect (as was, in fact, the case 

 with nearly all of them), have in many cases, and 

 should in every one, have designated their systems 

 by the term Testaceology, which is more appropriate, 

 as not admitting any perversion of the meaning 

 they attached to it, and clearly expressing its 

 derivation and object Testa, the Latin word for 

 a shell ; and Logos, a Greek word, meaning a 

 discourse or treatise on the subject to which that 

 word is added when descriptive of a science. The 

 Greek writers on natural history also used the term 

 Ostracology, which has the same meaning, and is con- 

 sidered by many authors far preferable, not being a 

 compound of two languages, a fault but too frequently 

 observable in the terminology of all works on natural 

 history. Until within about the last half century, 

 nearly every author on this branch of nature has 

 written exclusively on the arrangement of shells, 

 detached from the animals inhabiting and constructing 

 them ; this, with very little exception, continued down 

 to the period when the immortal Linnaeus, who may 

 be styled the father of systems, among others, formed 

 one of Conchology, but, like his predecessors, it was 

 based entirely on the form of the shell, and his genera 

 composed from the characters it presented. This 

 was done with considerable judgment, and many of 

 his descriptions are extremely accurate, so far as 

 regards external configuration, but in theory,- this 

 system is wholly artificial, and consequently bad. It 

 is true he seems to have felt it so to a certain extent, 

 since he has made some reference to the analogous 

 animal which he imagined to have belonged to the shell ; 

 these he placed amongst his Zoophytes, but he still 

 took no other guide than the form of the shell, and 

 made but few inquiries with respect to the supposed 

 inhabitant. The impulse given throughout Europe 

 by his system, and that of several other eminent 

 naturalists, led to an extended view of the subject ; 

 their attention became drawn to the anatomical 

 investigation of the animals themselves ; and the sub- 

 ject presented an interest never before experienced ; 

 accounts were published of the result of these inquiries, 

 gradually producing a different method of viewing the 

 classification of molluscous animals ; and Pallas may 

 be considered the head of this new school, as, in fact, 

 it was from his M'iscellanea Zoologica that the first 

 germ of improvement was derived in the arrangement 

 of shells, since grown into its present form, though as 

 yet, in many respects, only in its infancy. 



Before this, all the systems descriptive of testace- 

 ology, were as imperfect as an arrangement of the 

 feathers of birds would have been in ornithology, or 

 the scales of fishes in icthyology, were writers on 

 these objects of the creation to have confined them- 

 selves alone to a systematic arrangement of those 

 parts, without a reference to the animals of which they 

 are merely necessary portions. Cuvier, that great 

 master of nature, feeling the importance of the subject 

 and the want of such an arrangement, directed the 

 vast resources of his giant mind to the accomplish- 

 ment of the only conclusive classification that can be 

 formed ; he improved upon the hints thrown out by 

 previous naturalists ; surmounted the difficulties they 

 could not overcome, and was the first to complete a 



general systematic classification of shells, built upon 

 an investigation of the animals themselves, in which 

 the families were ranked according to their structure 

 and habit, as far as they were known, or could be 

 safely decided upon by analogous reasoning. Thus, 

 by taking nature as his guide, he has created a system 

 that will stand the test of time as being the most 

 natural, and consequently the best that can be fol- 

 lowed. Like every human effort it has its errors, 

 but they are fewer in number, and more those 

 of observation than of theory. Prior to this period 

 little more had been effected than to point out a 

 tolerably lucid arrangement of shells themselves, with- 

 out any other guide than that of the external con- 

 figuration they presented, a system perpetually subject 

 to error, because it is not natural, and one which has 

 occasioned the innumerable inconsistencies of Linnaeus. 

 There is no one at all an observer of natural history 

 but will confess, that the apparent freaks of nature, 

 in her productions, are so unaccountable, particularly 

 in conchology, that they never can be depended 

 upon as secure indications, when unsupported by a 

 knowledge of their causes. This can only be ac- 

 quired by a careful and repeated examination of the 

 animals constructing the shells, and who form their 

 habitations after such a fashion as is best adapted 

 to their wants and security. Nature never oversteps 

 the bounds which the necessary conditions of existence 

 prescribe to her ; but, when she is unconfined by 

 these conditions, she displays all her fertility and 

 variety, never, however, departing from the smallest 

 number of combinations that are possible in the 

 essential modifications, though apparently sporting 

 with infinite caprice in all the accessory parts. In 

 these there seems no necessity for a particular form or 

 disposition ; it even frequently happens that peculiar 

 forms are created without any self-evident utility. It 

 seems sufficient that they should be possible, that is 

 to say, that they do not destroy the harmony of the 

 whole ; in proportion, therefore, as we turn our atten- 

 tion from the important organs of animals, to those 

 whose functions are less so, we discover increasing 

 variations. But when we arrive at the surface of the 

 bod}', as in shells, where the nature of things requires 

 that the parts least essential, and the injury of which 

 is least dangerous, should be placed, it becomes so 

 considerable, that all the labours of naturalists have 

 not yet been able to give us an account of them. 

 Among these numerous combinations, there are 

 necessarily many which have common parts, and 

 there is always a certain number which exhibit very 

 few differences. By the comparison, therefore, of 

 those which resemble each other, we may establish a 

 kind of series, which will appear to descend gradually 

 from a primitive type ; a consideration of these have 

 formed the foundation of the ideas some naturalists 

 entertain of a scale of Being ; the object of which is 

 to exhibit the whole in one series, commencing with 

 the most perfect, and terminating with the most 

 simple kind of organisation, or that which posses 

 the least numerous and most common properties, so 

 that the mind passes from one link of the chain to the 

 other, almost without perceiving any interval, and, as 

 it were, by insensible shades. These observations 

 may generally apply to the study of natural history 

 in all its branches, and is particularly evinced in the 

 classification of shells adopted by modern naturalists, 

 from the structure and organisation of their inhabi- 

 tants : it constitutes that striking advance in the science, 



