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young shells, and afterwards finding the adult shell, which is 
very different, called it Cerithium reticulatum. It has for 
many years been called Cerythium Sayi, but a late author 
has again credited it to him, under the name of Brittium 
nigrum. 
A species of Succinea (S. Totteniana) was dedicated to 
General Totten by Mr. Isaac Lea of Philadelphia. 
Conchologists are also indebted to General Totten for the 
discovery of means‘for the preservation of the epidermis or 
periostraca of shells, which is in many species so liable to 
crack, and this recipe has been received with much appro- 
bation by many collectors who have found it to supply a’ 
want much felt. The valuable collection of rare shells which 
he made at this period of his life he presented to the Smith- 
sonian Institution, without the usual condition that it should 
be preserved separately, but to be used most advantageously 
for the advancement of sciencé to complete the general col- 
lection of the Museum, or for distribution as duplicates to 
other establishments. 
In the “ Annals of the Lyceum of Natural History of New 
York” for 1824 (Vol. L pp. 109-114) he published “Notes 
on some new Supports for Minerals, subjected to the Action 
of the Common Blowpipe.” ‘These researches on the use and 
power of the blowpipe appear to have been incited by an 
article of James Smithson, the subsequent founder of the 
ithsonian Institution, and the memoir of Totten commences 
with a reference to and rehearsal of the experiments of that 
gentleman, as detailed in a letter to the editor of the Annals 
of Philosophy. Smithson, it was remarked, had communt- 
cated several ingenious modifications of Saussure’s process 
with supports of splinters of sapphire, which process, he ob- 
serves, “has been scarcely at all employed ; owing partly to 
the excessive difficulty, in general, of making the particles 
