5° 



NOTES ON THE GENUS AMPULLARIA. 



By WILLIAM HEALEY DALL, A.M., Sc.D, 



(Read before the Society, February lo, 1904). 



The first reference to the shells of this genus as distinguished from 

 Helix, Planorbis, etc., is to be found in the "Museum Calonnianum," 

 in 1797. This publication was a sale catalogue issued, without any 

 name of author or publisher, by G. Humphrey, an auctioneer and 

 dealer, to whom had been consigned the collection of M. de Calonne, 

 driven from France by the political troubles of the Revolution of 1793. 

 The book is rare and was doubtless sent out to such amateurs as the 

 seller thought likely to participate in purchases. For some reason, 

 however, the collection was not sold at the time. 



The shells contained in the Calonne collection comprised, among 

 others, the collection originally belonging to M. Hvass, sometime 

 Danish Consul at Paris, to whom the monograph of the genus Comis 

 in the "Encyclopedic Mdthodique" is due. Hvass was a bachelor, 

 who lost his fortune by the outbreak of the French Revolution, which 

 obliged him to sell his shells, which were bought by M. de Paris, from 

 whose possession they passed into that of M. de Calonne. Shortly 

 afterwards Hvass died. The collection seems to have been sent to 

 England and sold as a whole to G. Humphrey, together with a manu- 

 script by Hvass in which they were classified. I was informed by the 

 late Sylvanus Hanley and J. Gwyn Jeffreys that the tradition was" that 

 • Humphrey put the manuscript into the hands of E. M. DaCosta, by 

 whom it was seen through the press, and who made a few alterations, 

 though as a whole the arrangement of Hvass was not changed. Most 

 of the copies (I have seen five, of which I own two, while another is 

 in the Library of Congress)^ bear annotations and changes in a hand 

 which agrees well with that of Humphrey's labels, some of which were 

 preserved in the Jeffreys Collection now in the U.S. National Museum. 

 One copy, which has passed through the hands of Spengler, Coun- 

 seller of State Thomsen, Roding, H. Beck, R. Berg, O. A. L. Morch 

 and myself, has a contemporary MS. note in the supposed hand ot 

 Humphrey, adding to paragraph i, page 5, the words, "from a mscr. 

 of Mr. Hvas." There is also a note by Morch stating that Roding 

 received from Humphrey colored plates illustrating part of the col- 

 lection; which I suppose may have been what has been noted in 

 bibliographies as the " Museum Hunfredianum," a work which 

 appears to have been wholly lost. 



I A copy is in the library of the Manchester Museum.— W.E.H. 



