MELVILL: BRITISH PIONEERS IN CONCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE. 221 



conjointly, or with Mr. Lovell Reeve. With the publication of 

 so important a contribution to Conchological Science it seems 

 fitting we should close this fourth epoch, a period which perhaps 

 shewed more activity in systematic and descriptive work than 

 any other, and immediately preceded the highest development 

 of literary effort on the subject. Mr. Henry Adams died 1877, 

 his brother 1878. 



Before concluding my address, it seems well to review our 

 position at the present time, just ten years before the close of 

 this famous nineteenth century. 



The period (thirty one years) that has elapsed since the 

 publication of the " Genera of the Recent MoUusca," has 

 furnished an overwhelming fund of records, essays, and material 

 garnered from all parts of the Vv'orld. During this time, the 

 Darwinian theories as to the origin of species and natural 

 selection have changed the current of scientific feeling, and the 

 very term "Natural History" is now contemptuously thrust aside, 

 and " Biology " takes its place. Collectors of the old school who 

 believed in the finiteness of species, are considered to belong 

 almost to prehistoric times, and the old-fashioned student, giving 

 a description from the shell alone, has also to take care lest the 

 physiological investigator of his science wrest the laurels from 

 him. The increasing tendency of the age is against mere 

 geographical or systematic research alone, the fact being that 

 the too minute differentiation of species and varieties is bearing 

 the fruit that might have been expected, first having led to use- 

 less reduplication of names in many instances, and then to still 

 greater confusion by rendering the cataloguing of the Mollusca 

 an almost impossible task. 



There can be no doubt of the enormous strides in our 

 knowledge of the Mollusca when we compare present work with 

 that of previous years. The classic elaborations on the Mollusca 

 of the "Challenger" Expedition, and Mr. W. H. Dall's 

 exhaustive descriptions of the shells of the ss. " Blake " Dredg- 



