246 History of Conchology. 



could have kept alive. If perchance, says he, a stranger should be 

 told that this man had devoted his years to the dissection of ani- 

 malcules and snails, it might provoke his contempt or laughter, un- 

 less, indeed, the dissector was another Harvey, Malpighi, or a 

 Redi ; but I do not vehemently yearn for the applause of any one> 

 having had my reward, for these exercises which were my pleasure 

 and delight in youth, now that I am old they are my solace. And 

 now when I am, from a failure of sight, compelled to use the mi- 

 croscope, and find that by its aid I can again enjoy myself in those 

 studies, which have been long denied to the unassisted eye, I re- 

 joice greatly.* We do love to dwell on the character of this man. 

 Learned in his profession, and attaining its highest honours, — for 

 he was physician to Queen Anne, — we now see him refocating his 

 jaded spirits in the contemplation of his collections of shells, and 

 enjoying, with a rapture which minds framed like his only feel, all 

 their beauties and symmetries and singularities ; — again we see him 

 examining with a fatherly pride and pleasure the drawings which 

 his daughters, who stand beside him, had laboured to finish before 

 the duties of the day permitted their beloved parent to retire to his 

 ease and study, — and at a more leisured season we see him, bent 

 somewhat with age and infirmities,t anatomizing with the zeal and skill 

 of his youth the creatures which he loved so well to study, now his 

 keen eye kindling as the thought crosses him, that in this structure 

 there was a ray which shed light on some obscurity in his own frame, 

 — now lost in wonder at some display of a mechanism which can 

 have but one author, while involuntarily he breathes the hymn, — 

 " Oh altitude ! In his tarn parvis, atque tam nullis, quae ratio ? 

 quanta vis ! quam inextricabilis perfectio !" 



Lister then greatly advanced conchology by rescuing it from the 

 charge of frivolity, by an unrivalled series of illustrations of species, 

 by many novel, remarks on their habits, by a very complete history 

 of the species of his native land, and chiefly by giving us some ex- 

 cellent essays on the structure and physiology of the Mollusca which 

 had been neglected since the time of Aristotle, for the isolated no- 

 tices of a few species by Willis, Redi, Harderus, and Swammer- 

 dam, however good, had no influence on conchology, while those 

 of Lister are epochal. He was fully aware too of the importance 

 of system in this study, but he had not critically examined its real 

 objects and use, and his classification, though elaborate, claims no 

 praise of superiority. The habitat aff^ords the character for his pri- 



* Exercit. Anat. des CocLleis, p. 2. 



f See the Preface to the App. Hist. Anim. Ang, 



