1867.] DR. J. E. GRAY ON THE CALYPTR^ID.f:. 729 



shown by the offer that was made to me respecting the new Volute • 



and private collections have been much enriched by such labours ' 



No one knew better than Mr. Cummg the value of a new name 



L nnvT'Tn' '' ''•^'"'^ ^y ^}' '"""^''y '^ «"y ^"'^ ^ho doubted 

 the novelty of the species described. He would not allow me to see 



his collection for many years after his return from South America 

 because I had pointed out to him at one of the meetin-s of this 

 Society that some of the shells which Messrs. Sowerby and^Broderip 

 had described as new were well-known species, and well figured by 

 Chemnitz. Indeed I was not allowed to see any part of his col- 

 lection unti It was first offered to the British Museum for sale 

 during his illness about sixteen years ao-o. 



Since that period Mr. Cuming refused a well-known concholo-ist 

 who had previously described several shells from his cabinet/any' 

 turtlier use ot his collection, because he refused to admit that cer- 



^.•pn.?'"T^' ff ^' ''"' '^ .^™ '"^ ^' '^^^^"bed were new to 

 science, or different from species already described 



The system that Mr. Cuming adopted of selecting three specimens 



of each variety or species most alike tended to prevent the number 



of nominal or presumed species from being observed during a casual 



examination of the collection, as it excluded those specimens which 



showed the transition from one variety to another which occurs in 



any given species-more especially as the species were not arranged 



ni the drawers so that the most allied or presumed species were near 



each other, but, on the contrary, the two or more variations of 



the same species were often placed as species iu distant parts of the 



The fact of a naturalist having the power of merely addin- his 

 name after the name of an animal or plant described has been sup- 

 posed to have influenced many in attempting to establish species, or 

 in altering the names of old species on very slight grounds but if 

 we add to this little vanity the greater inducemenrof an increase 

 m the value of the specimens themselves and the collection in which 

 they are contained, or of increasing the sale of the book in which 

 they are described and figured, or, further, if a naturalist is to be 

 paid so much per species for all the species he can describe from a 

 collection It is not d.flScult to believe, under these various circum- 

 stances, that the number of the species in such a collection are verv 

 needlessly increasedT -T ""> 



This has caused so many nominal species to be created by col- 

 lectors of ferns and other plants and by nurserymen ; but such names 

 are rarely regarded as of any authority by scientific botanists. 



I have had the shells of the Cumingian collection placed on tablets 

 so tliat they may be arranged in the same series as the other shells 

 1.1 the Bntish Museum; but each tablet is marked iu such a manner 

 that It may be at once distinguished from the rest of the collection 

 so that there can be no doubt about which are the types or the 

 presumed types of the species described from the collection I 

 feared that, it the shells were not placed on tablets, the specimens of 

 the same species might be separated from their allies and mixed witli 

 Proc. Zool. Soc— 18(i7, No. XLVII. 



