730 DR. J. E. GRAY ON THE CALYPTR^ID-E. [Juiie 27, 



those of other species, and thus the identity of the nomenclature 

 might be destroyed or rendered doubtful. 



It is to be hoped that some day this magnificent collection of shells 

 in the British Museum may be studied scientifically, and all their 

 nominal and dealers' species be reduced to synonyms, and eventually 

 allowed to drop out of the catalogue, to which the greater part of 

 them ought never to have been admitted. To attempt to do this to 

 some extent in certain famiUes is the one of the objects of this paper. 



I have not attempted in these notes to give a general synonymy 

 of the species ; but I have only added after the name of each species 

 a list of the names and their authors that are attached to the speci- 

 mens of the species described in Mr. Cuming's collection, which are 

 to be presumed to be the types of the species described or figured 

 under these names by the author quoted. In some instances the 

 state of the specimen named by the author renders the determi- 

 nation uncertain ; then I have added a mark of doubt before the 

 names. 



At the commencement of this century shells were generally ar- 

 ranged according to the Linnean system, and Dillwyn's ' Species of 

 Shells' was one of the best works published, and Wood's ' Illustrated 

 Catalogue ' was a useful and cheap collection of figures ; and the 

 system suited very well for the small number of species then known. 



Some of the older collectors preferred to use Humphrey's cata- 

 logue, in which many modern genera were sketched out, rather than 

 the heterogeneous collection of species that were crowded in the Lin- 

 nean genera. 



Whenever a person had a large collection to arrange he found, like 

 Humphrey, that the shells fell into natural groups that were recog- 

 nized by the public, who had given them vernacular names. 



Thus Lichtenstein in Berlin, Schumacher in Copenhagen, and 

 Lamarck in Paris, each having a large collection to arrange, pro- 

 posed new groups of species, or genera, and a new arrangement of 

 the genera. 



Lamarck, who had been educated as a botanist, set to work to de- 

 scribe the species in the genera which he proposed ; and that gave a 

 preponderance to his system. 



The use of the Lamarckian system was first introduced into Eng- 

 land by my predecessor, Mr. Children, who arranged the shells in 

 the British Museum on that system, and published a translation of 

 Lamarck's ' Genera,' illustrated with a figure of each. Sowerby and 

 Couch published similar works. And more lately the late Mr. 

 Woodward, who seems to have been disturbed at the rapid progress 

 that the knowledge of the animals and shells were making in this 

 country, publislied his manual, which is written chiefly from a 

 palaeontologist's point of view, trying to stem the current; and the 

 manner in which his work has been received, and is still spoken of, 

 is a proof that he well understood the calibre of the collectors both 

 of recent and fossil shells. 



When the collection of shells was arranged in the eastern gallery 

 of the British Museum, which had been built for the National Gallery, 



