THE NAUTILUS. 97 
I have never had the pleasure of seeing a live Razor except- 
ing on my visit to Wellfieet. 
SPECIES NAMED IN THE PORTLAND CATALOGUE: I, AMERICAN. 
BY WILLIAM HEALEY DALL. 
Daniel Solander, a pupil of Linnaeus, came to London in 
search of fortune, where he died in 1783, at the age of forty- 
seven years. 
During his residence he was employed by Sir Joseph Banks 
to classify the Banksian Collection, afterward included in the 
British Museum. He also was engaged in arranging and class- 
ifying the conchological part of the remarkable collection gath- 
ered by Margaret Cavendish, Dowager Duchess of Portland. 
This collection is chiefly remembered by its connection with the 
funeral urn of Alexander Severus, then known as the Barbarini 
vase, purchased at the sale by the British Museum, renamed 
the Portland vase, later smashed by a precursor of the militant 
suffragettes, and wonderfully put together again from its frag- 
ments by patient work. 
Solander named many nondescript shells in the Banksian 
Collection, and his manuscript furnished Dillwyn with many 
names or synonynis for his Catalogue of 1817. 
After the death of the Duchess in 1785, her conchological 
collection, with other zoological, artistic, and historical items, 
was sold in the following year, and where Solander had named 
an undescribed species with reference to a figure in one of the 
earlier iconographies, this name is published in the catalogue 
prepared by an anonymous compiler and printed in April, 
1786. Many of these names were afterward adopted, mostly 
without acknowledgment, by Bolten, Lamarck, and other later 
writers. The best known among the American species is our 
common Unio complanatus. The death of Solander before the 
publication of any of his new names Jeaves them dependent 
upon the Catalogue above mentioned and the citations of 
Dillwyn. 
A few of the names are accompanied by a descriptive phrase, 
