XX SYNOPSIS OF THE FAMILY OF NAIADES. 



necessary to accomplish the object, considering the crude state the subject was in. I shall 

 be most agreeably disappointed if there be not parts pointed out as erroneous which are 

 substantially correct. It will be observed that the works of M. Eafinesque are but little 

 quoted. This lias arisen from the utter impossibility of satisfying myself as to his species, 

 causing me at an early period to abandon the task of making out his very imperfect de- 

 scriptions. His own discrepancy in the names sent to Ferussac, 1 and those which are 

 attached to specimens here, together with the want of accordance in the tables made out 

 by his friends, have induced me to regard his claims as being too slender to rely upon the 

 decisions, so contradictory, of the several parties, in the absence of the individual speci- 

 mens noted. In the absence of these specimens, which no naturalist has, I believe, ever 

 seen but the Professor, I feel myself compelled to prefer other authorities, which are now 

 almost universally received by our malacologists. I am the more fortified in this con- 

 clusion, when I see that his most ardent advocate acknowledges that he has made six 

 species from a single one; 2 and the absurdity is still stronger when we turn to M. Rafi- 

 nesque's monograph, and find that this single species has furnished several genera, and is 

 placed, in fact, in two different sub-families! ! J 3 



In regard to the Catalogue published last year by Baron Ferussac, in which he gives 

 precedence to many of M. Rafinesque's names, it must be remembered that this has 

 been done on the authority of others, and not from the inspection of the specimens them- 

 selves. Had he known the manner in which these claims had been brought forward, he 

 certainly would have admitted them with doubt. 



1 "Les erreurs involuntaires qui eckappent k M. Eafinesque dans ses envois augmentent aussi la difficult^ de 

 reconnaitre ses especes. Nous avons recu de lui les memes coquilles sous diflerents noms, et d'autres avec les noms 

 evidemment autres que ceux qu'elles portent dans sa Monographie. II en est resulte une difficulte inextricable pour 

 la determination de ses especes, et pour pouvoir etablir une synonyniie exacte entre lui et les autres qui, depuis, se 

 sont occupes des Mulettes." — Magasin de Zoologie, p. 13. 



2 U. triangularis. Conrad's Synoptical Table of New Fresh Water Shells of the United States, p. 72. 



3 See page 57. 



