CONCHOLOGY. 



105 



which distinguishes it from the Linnsean school, in 

 which a knowledge of the animal was not at all studied. 

 In the present slate of zoology, the shell and its archi- 

 tect must be coupled together, and Conchology, as it 

 was formerly understood, can no longer, with pro- 

 priety, express the system it now embraces, and which 

 the French naturalists expressively call Malacology, 

 a term meaning a treatise on soft animals a title 

 so satisfactory that we cannot do better than adopt 

 it. Under the article MOLLUSCA, we shall more fully 

 explain the principles of the system, at present \ve 

 will confine ourselves principally to Conchology, in 

 the light it has hitherto been viewed that of a 

 description of testaceous bodies. It may be well here 

 to observe, that we have indiscriminately used the 

 word mollusc as applied to shells as well as to their 

 inhabitants, throughout all the articles in this work, 

 treating of that branch of natural history. In this we 

 are sanctioned by the authority of several eminent 

 English naturalists. 



To persons who are collecting shells and forming 

 cabinets of them only as beautiful objects of creation, 

 the system of Linnaeus may answer as well as any 

 other, since they feel no interest in the scientific 

 arrangement of the species, or those wonderful pro- 

 gressions which mark the connecting links of genera, 

 families and species with each other, changes fre- 

 quently only to be accounted for by an adaptation of 

 parts to necessity. Indeed, were it possible to pre- 

 serve the animals who have formed the various species, 

 they would present no attraction to the eye, nor add 

 any value to the shells that contained them ; but the 

 impossibility of doing this renders the researches and 

 reasoning of naturalists the more valuable. It may, 

 indeed, to mere collectors of shells, appear wholly 

 uninteresting, but a moment's reflection would con- 

 vince them, that when we attempt to raise a part 

 of the mysterious veil thrown over the works of 

 nature, in order to acquire some knowledge of her laws, 

 we then derive a new satisfaction in contemplating 

 their operations ; so that without being ourselves 

 either anatomists, physiologists, or naturalists, in an 

 extended sense of their meaning, we cannot fail of 

 having our attention roused to examine many facts, 

 extremely curious in themselves, which the shell alone 

 exhibits, and the mind, once excited into action, seldom 

 rests until it is satisfied. By pursuing a subject to 

 its utmost limit, generally speaking too, the more 

 difficult the task becomes, the more ambitious we are to 

 surmount it. The mind may, indeed, for a time, flag and 

 fed fatigued by over exertion, but such are its elastic 

 faculties, that they may be deemed indefinitely 

 expansible ; to say at what point knowledge will stop 

 is utterly impossible, we must not, therefore, reject as 

 useless such portions of it as we cannot immediately 

 understand, but relying on others more advanced 

 than ourselves, endeavour, by every possible exertion, 

 either to corroborate their assertions by our own 

 observation, or, by following the guide given us, to 

 pursue the inquiry still farther. In this point of 

 view, surely the amateur of shells must desire to 

 have his collection arranged according to some- 

 thing like a natural system, and we cannot too fre- 

 quently impress on the young naturalist's mind, the 

 necessity of observing most attentively the indi- 

 cations so often furnished by nature, many of which 

 are very generally overlooked, and altogether despised 

 as useless, from their being but slightly defined : 

 these are, nevertheless, the natural indices to much 



information, and though not in every instance con- 

 clusive in themselves, may always be deemed the 

 safest and best guides we can follow in pursuing an 

 unknown tract of inquiry, to which the main road is 

 concealed, or not generally attainable. 



The modern systems of Cuvier, Lamarck, and 

 other naturalists of that school, embracing, as we have 

 stated, a knowledge of the animal as the foundation 

 for the classification of its covering, have by many been 

 found fault with on account of the multiplication of 

 genera, which appears to them unnecessary and difficult 

 to comprehend ; but such in fact is not the case : on the 

 contrary, the study of testaceology is greatly simplified, 

 and the learner's progress considerably facilitated by 

 confining within a narrower compass the too widely- 

 extended genera of Linnaeus, and re-modelling those 

 he had blended together in the most confused manner, 

 whether with regard to the form of the shell and its 

 habitat, or the functions and structure of the animal, 

 a reference to which he merely glanced at. By the 

 information now obtained, from an anatomical investi- 

 gation of these singular creatures, we are enabled 

 to distinguish between them by certain more or less 

 strongly marked generic characters peculiar to each, and 

 to place their dwellings in a natural series of classes to 

 which this knowledge can alone conduct us. If it be 

 said that the increased number of genera obliges the 

 student to charge his memory with a greater num- 

 ber of sometimes hard names, it cannot much sig- 

 nify, since a knowledge of the whole catalogue can 

 only be acquired progressively. To the disciples of 

 the Linnuean school, the argument still less applies, 

 since they have only to add the newly-constituted 

 genera to those they already know, all of which 

 have been retained by modern writers, only, as 

 before remarked, more naturally distributed, as will 

 be shown under the article MOLLUSCA, in which a 

 comparative view of the two schools, and the changes 

 that have taken place, with the reasons for so doing, 

 will be more fully, and, we trust, satisfactorily ex- 

 plained. 



We will also here observe, that we have, in some 

 degree, deviated from the beaten path of an alpha- 

 betical publication, by including in this article much 

 matter that might more properly be deemed ref'er- 

 rible to the article SHELL. We have done so in 

 order to render the subject more comprehensive and 

 more readily understood by many of our readers, who 

 doubtless have much to learn before they can derive 

 any pleasure or sound instruction from the study of 

 this branch of natural history in a systematic form. 

 A considerable time must elapse before the article 

 SHELL can make its appearance, though various 

 matters relative to it are continually given under their 

 particular head in our alphabetical arrangement ; and 

 to those who have not made Conchology their study, 

 many terms technically used to explain portions of the 

 subject, would be incomprehensible, and the science 

 rendered doubly difficult to understand ; but by 

 now including a glossary of many terms, established by 

 modern naturalists in the description of parts of shells, 

 their relative position, and their connection with each 

 other, some account of their growth and distribution 

 in nature, a rapid view of the history of Testaceology, 

 as we here continue to call it, down to the period 

 when the necessary corrections of the Linnaean sys- 

 tem required that change of classification which 

 includes the animals with the shells, the science 

 became more properly designated Malacology, we 



