66 MELVILL: MEMOIR OF THE LATE HUGH CUMING. 
the Indian Ocean, and in the islands of its rich Archipelago— 
in the labour of obtaining from native seas, shores, lakes, 
rivers, and forests, the marine, fluviatile, and terrestrial mollusca, 
60,000 of whose shelly skeletons, external and internal, are accu- 
mulated in orderly series in the cabinets with which the floors 
of his house now groan. I never think of the casualities to 
which such a collection in such a place is subject without a 
shudder! . . . Perhaps one of the most striking points in 
the estimate of the scientific value of an extensive collection 
like Mr. Cuming’s, arises out of its relation to the present active 
pursuit of geology as an indispensable instrument to the deter- 
mination of fossil shells. No one can give higher sanction than 
yourself to any expression of the importance of well-determined 
fossils, and especially shells, to a right knowledge of the relative 
age and position of the strata in which they were embedded; 
and the geologist’s confidence in results based upon fossil con- 
chology must be in the ratio of the extent of this comparison 
with recent shells that have been gone through in the deter- 
mination of the fossil shells, and especially before a species is 
pronounced to be extinct. 
“This, however, is but one of its scientific uses. From the 
period when the Atlantic, American, and Polynesian depart- 
ments of the Cumingian collection reached England, in 1831, 
scientific conchologists have there found subjects without inter- 
mission for their descriptions, and the novelties were far from 
being exhausted when Mr. Cuming having undertaken a third 
exploring voyage, returned in 1840 from Manilla, stored with the 
conchological riches of the Indian Ocean, which have subse- 
quently kept the pens of competent describers of new genera 
and species actively at work, and will supply them for years to 
come. Thus the Cumingian Collection has directly advanced 
the science of conchology in an unexampled degree, and 
- possesses the same peculiar claims upon the Government as 
custodians of the National collection here which Linnzeus’ 
Herbarium did upon the Swedish State. Mr. Cuming’s 
J.C., viii., July, 1895. 
