DALL : NOTES ON THE GENUS AMPULLARIA. 51 



However great an improvement on the contemporaneous classifica- 

 tions the work of Hvass may have been when it was written, it 

 contains nothing which is of scientific value at the present time. 

 Owing, doubtless, to the prevalence of war, it was unknown on the 

 continent, and unreferred to in systematic conchology until nearly 

 fifty years later, when, in 1845, Menke took notes from the copy 

 above described. About half-a-dozen copies are known. 



I have held that, as an anonymous pamphlet not issued for sale and 

 bearing the name of neither author nor publisher, it is not entitled to 

 be cited for systematic names. As there are neither diagnoses, nor 

 figures given or cited, it was barred by the British Association rules 

 of 1842. From the history which I have recorded above, it is evident 

 that if anyone is given credit for the names (should they be cited) it 

 should be Hvass and not Humphrey. I may add that a large number 

 of the best known names in the science would be overthrown and 

 reduced to synonymy if the names of the "Museum Calonnianum" 

 are accepted, and without the slightest benefit to science. Among 

 them is the name of the genus which is the subject of these notes. 



Popularly known as the "Apple Snail" we find it called jP/??/22/j-, and, 

 though five nude specific names are given in the hst, only one of 

 them is identifiable, P. ampullacea, of China, to which is added as a 

 synonym ^^ Helix ampullacea Linn." 



The following year appeared the "Museum Boltenianum" in which, 

 though no diagnoses were given, full citations of name, volume, page 

 and figure of previous authors were provided, and there seems to be 

 no way in which we can consistently refuse to adopt the Boltenian 

 name if we accept any names given without a diagnosis, as has now 

 become a common practice. 



Bolten proposes the name Pila (a ball) for the apple snails, and 

 divides the forms commonly included under Helix amptdlacea Linn^ 

 into six species, retaining the name ampullacea for one of them. Pila 

 had not previously been used by any binomial author for a genus of 

 animals. Bolten specifies no type and his Hst includes both Asiatic 

 species, with a calcareous operculum, and American forms with a 

 horny one. In 1799 Lamarck proposed the name of Ampullaria 

 with the sole example cited Helix ampullacea L. The original type 

 of this species — for which the name ampullacea must be preserved, 

 in contradistinction to those allied forms previously associated with it — 

 is the shell figured from the original by Philippi in his monograph of 

 Ampullaria ("Conch. Cab.", ed. Kiister, p. 62, pi. 20, fig. 6), under 

 the name of A. Linncei; and also by Reeve ("Conch. Icon.", H.,fy^ 

 Ampullaria, pi. 24, fig. 115). This is an Asiatic species with a cal- 

 careous operculum. But Lamarck, like his contemporaries, included 



