152 Miscellaneous. 



when the Atlantic, American and Polynesian departments of this 

 collection reached England in 1831, scientific conchologists have 

 there found subjects without intermission for their descriptions ; and 

 the novelties were far from being exhausted, when Mr. Cuming, 

 having undertaken a third voyage in prosecution of his favourite 

 science, returned in 1840 from Manilla, freighted with the concho- 

 logical riches of the Indian Ocean, which have subsequently kept 

 the pens of competent describers of new genera and species actively 

 at work, and will so supply them for years to come : thus the Cu- 

 mingian collection has directly advanced the science of conchology 

 in an unexampled degree, and possesses the same peculiar claims 

 upon the Government and Custodians of the National Museum in 

 this country which Linnseus's Herbarium did upon the Swedish 

 State. Mr. Cuming's collection contains, for example, the originals 

 from which many hundreds of new species of shells have been de- 

 scribed in the scientific periodicals or systematic works published 

 since its arrival in this country. 



Any doubt that may arise through the incompleteness of the de- 

 scription, or from the inapprehensiveness of the student, may be de- 

 cided at once by reference to the original specimens. These ' types 

 of the species ' become therefore an instrument of great importance 

 to the progress of the science in the country in which they are pre- 

 served and made accessible. The price asked by the executors of 

 Linnaeus was deemed by the authorities in Sweden too high for the 

 great botanist's dried herbs, and you well know what happened. 

 When better knowledge and consideration had awakened a due sense 

 of their value, it was too late ; an enterprising Englishman had 

 struck the bargain with the widow. The Swedish government sent 

 a frigate in chase of the vessel on board which Sir James Edward 

 Smith had embarked the precious herbarium, but without success. 

 It now forms the choicest treasure of the museum of the Linneean 

 Society, and continues to be of peculiar value as aiFording botanists 

 the means of ascertaining with certainty the synonyms of the wri- 

 tings of Linnaeus. 



An English naturalist may be pardoned for citing this well-known 

 incident in the light of a warning, when further delay in securing for 

 the nation the Cumingian types of new species of shells may involve 

 the necessity of crossing the Atlantic in order to compare and verify 

 the descriptions and synonyms of Broderip, Sowerby, Gray, and 

 other eminent conchologists. 



To the physiologist the Cumingian collection has a value beyond 

 any other now in Europe, from the circumstance of its possessor 

 having endeavoured to exemplify each species by a series of shells of 

 different ages, as well as by the chief varieties which result from the 

 influence of peculiar external circumstances. 



The extent to which Mr. Cuming has carried out this truly philo- 

 sophical aim of elucidating his favourite department of nature is 

 very remarkable, and renders his collection most important and sug- 

 gestive in its bearings upon the higher generalizations of zoological 

 science, touching the nature of species and the circumstances and 



