iv 



prices fixed in a copy of the Catalogue to be kept in 

 the room ; and after two months shall have elapsed 

 from I lie time of the first opening;, the Shells forming 

 the principal Collection will be also offered to the 

 Public, unless an eligible offer should previously be 

 made for them by private contract ; and it is hoped 

 that the opportunity thus afforded to any public in- 

 stitution to enrich their museum by the addition of 

 so valuable a collection will not be neglected. 



This Catalogue is necessarily incomplete, because 

 the actual sta-te of our knowledge in Conchology 

 would not permit us to make it such as we could have 

 wished it to be to meet the public eye. It will be ob- 

 served, that this Collection consists of nearly 2500 

 species, many of which are only known by imperfect 

 descriptions, and many others, if they 1)0 described 

 at all, arc with difficulty recognizable by the pub- 

 lished descriptions, so tliat in many instances we 

 liavc been compelled to leave blanks, to be filled up 

 as future actpiirements in this branch of science will 

 permit, at the end of each genus. In order to make 

 this little work more interesting than a ntere Cata- 

 logue would be, we liave ventured to add in an Ap- 

 pendix a short description of some of those Shells 

 which we have good I'cason to believe have not been 

 previously published by any author. A\'e have also 

 added a few cokuired plates, in general representing 

 some of the Shells we have so described, and in one 

 or two instances these plates are of well known but 

 extremely rare species. Among the latter is the 

 Conus Gloria-IMaris, of which shell we have never 



