498 HISTORY OF CONCHOLOGY. 



love of making collections of shells separately, that evidently 

 gave origin to the works of Bonanni and Lister, the first 

 which treated exclusively of these natural objects. 



Bonanni's work was published in the year 1681, and from 

 its title " Recreatio Mentis et Oculi in observatione Ani- 

 malium testaceorum"* was probably intended to be a book 

 of luxury, exhibiting in its plates whatever amongst shells 

 might please the eye or refocate the unoccupied mind. It 

 is, properly speaking, however, an introduction to Concho- 

 logy, and in this view of it, the volume becomes interesting, 

 since it affords the means by which the extent of the know- 

 ledge of Conchology at that period may be estimated. Of 

 the writings of his immediate predecessors he speaks very 

 slightingly: they remind him, he says, by their boastings 

 when these are compared with their deeds, of those birds 

 which floating aloft in the heavens draw notice by the am- 

 plitude of their spread of wing and the fulness of their 

 plumage, but captured and plucked, the exility of their 

 corpse proves to the sportsman how much he had been de- 

 ceived. The treatise is divided into four parts : in the first, 

 he proves, to his own satisfaction, that the study of shells is 

 not a puerile but a wise and profitable occupation ; investi- 

 gates the mode of generation both of living and fossilized 

 species ; declares the fit materials from which they are 

 formed, and takes occasion to talk learnedly of water, earths, 

 nitre and petrifying humours ; he descants on their colours, 

 forms, and properties by which the Creator renders them 

 visible to the privileged minds of philosophers ; and lastly, 

 enumerates their other uses to man, and what relates to them 

 as precious ornaments for museums, of the more remarkable 

 of which we have a particular account in his 12th chapter. 

 In the second part Bonanni describes each shell separately, 

 noticing their parts, form, colours, names, and the seas which 

 they inhabit. In the third part he propounds about forty 

 problems or hard questions, annexing reasons or " an argu- 

 ment " to the dark and doubtful, by which a ray of truth 

 may be thrown on them, and they may be made visible at 

 least to the mental eye ; he shows that pearls cannot be 

 formed from dew, as Pliny would persuade us ; that they 

 are not the young but a disease of conchs ; he explains why 

 a shell applied to the ear seems, by its murmurings, to lament 



* Recreatio Mentis et Oeuli in observatione Animalium testaceorum, curi- 

 osis Naturae inspectoribus Italico sermone primum proposita a P. Philippo 

 Bonanno Societatis Jesu, nunc denuo ab eodem Latine oblata, centum additis 

 testaceorum Iconibus, circa quse varia problemata proponuntur. Romte, 

 1684, 4to. 



