MELVILL: BRITISH PIONEERS IN CONCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE. 205 



never scrupled to change one for the other, usually retaining the 

 original label. 



About 450 species were described from these gatherings as 

 novelties, of which perhaps the most interesting is the still 

 unique Columbella pulcherrivia (Sow.). The Proceedings of the 

 Zoological Society from the year 1832 were filled with descriptions 

 of Mr. Cuming's new species, mostly by Reeve, Broderip & Sowerby. 

 After cruising down the West American coasts, he visited the 

 South Pacific, touching at Pitcairn's Island, the Isle of Annaa, 

 and other rich resorts. Three or four years afterwards in 1835- 

 36, through the influence of the then Earl ot Derby, a disting- 

 uished patron of the Sciences, Mr. Cuming visited the Philippine 

 Islands, where he was treated with the utmost consideration by 

 the authorities, and granted every facility for prosecuting his 

 favourite researches. It is reported that the native children 

 were hired to scour the woods for rare Hehces and Bulimi, while 

 divers and others ransacked the rivers and coral reefs. Mr. 

 Cuming collected 2,500 species of marine shells at the Philippine 

 Islands (Woodward), of which 250 were Mitra, 120 Conus, 

 100 Pleurotoma, 50 Cyprsea, and in land shells over 500 

 species. He also collected 130,000 specimens of plants, both 

 living and dried, including many novelties, and the result was the 

 richest collection of novelties ever amassed by one man, and 

 from the year 1839-40 till his death in August, 1865, he was 

 engaged in arranging and classifying his unexampled stores in 

 Gower Street, London, which, after his death, were sold to the 

 British Museum for the consideration of ;^6,ooo. His cabinets 

 of shells are supposed to have contained eighteen thousand 

 species or more, which now are almost entirely incorporated with 

 the National collections. 



Gray dedicated to him the genus Cumin gia {Tellmidce) and 

 hardly a genus but does not have some representative named in 

 honour of this most distinguished of all collectors of shells. 



It was in 1830 that Professor (now Sir Richard) Owen gave 

 to the world the results of his investigations on the animal of 



