BRUGUIERE. 517 



had assumed in Britain. Bruguiere, though a Linnaean in 

 principle, carried forward in some degree the system of his 

 master by intercalating many new and obviously necessary 

 genera ; and he was otherwise a conchologist of higher attain- 

 ments than any England could at that period boast of.* He 

 cannot be said to have promoted Conchology in any very 

 sensible degree, but he made no effort to arrest it, or detain 

 the science at the stage where Linnaeus had left it. Nor in- 

 deed is it perhaps possible to stop the march of any, however 

 trivial the branch of science, to perfection. Like the opera- 

 tions of Nature in her living productions ever tending to 

 maturity, there are periods of acceleration and delay, and 

 causes may for a season induce a sickly weakness that waits 

 long for a remedy, but come at last this will. Conchology 

 was now in her sickly time, nevertheless in a state of con- 

 stant advancement. Ellis, Baster, Bohadtch, Pallas, Miiller, 

 Forskal, Solander, and Otho Fabricius, all of whom might 

 have seen Linnaeus in the flesh, and were his immediate suc- 

 cessors, drew attention to the naked molluscans in particular, 

 whose curious variety was enticing and provocative to further 

 quest ; Herissant, Scopoli, Bruguiere, and Olivi, described 

 many species with their animals, and entered too into phy- 

 siological questions which it was worthy reasonable men to 

 solve ; Knorr, Davila, Martini and Chemnitz, Schroter, 

 Born, Pennant, Da Costa, andMartyn, set forth at intervals 

 volumes of figures more numerous in species, and more cor- 

 rect than had been hitherto attempted ; and the minute or 



* He made a distinct class of the Star-fish and Sea-Urchins, under the 

 name of " Echinodermata ;" but it is a proof of his ignorance of its real 

 relations and connections, when he made that class the connecting link be- 

 tween the soft mollusca and the testacea. Tab. Syst. des Vers, p. vi. 



Mr. Swainson asserts that Bruguiere borrowed his improvements from 

 Mr. George Humphrey, F.L.S., the chief commercial conchologist of his 

 time. Mr. Humphrey published his work in 1797 "Museum Calonni- 

 anum" "wherein he arranged the Testacea upon an entirely novel and 

 very remarkable plan," a plan which " served as the main foundation, al- 

 though unacknowledged, for the subsequent system of Bruguiere, if not of 

 Lamarck and Cuvier." " It was, therefore, not in France, but in England, 

 that the revolution against the meagre conchological school of Linnseus first 

 originated." Treat, on Malacology, p. 15. Mr. Swainson's enthusiasm in 

 the cause of a too much neglected conchologist has surely led him greatly 

 to overestimate his merits. Mr. Humphrey did not introduce any new prin- 

 ciple into his system ; and, so far as I can discover, his sole merit was in 

 indicating several good genera. These were not defined. Lamarck, and 

 more so Bruguiere, may have derived some hints from Humphrey ; but it 

 seems very absurd to suppose that Cuvier was in any way influenced by his 

 labours. " In common hands, analysis stops at the species or the genus, and 

 cannot rise to the order or the class." So it was with Humphrey and Bru- 

 guiere ; and so it was not with Cuvier. 



