2 INTRODUCTION. 



Besides the gentlemen already mentioned, I am indebted for the loan of specimens to 

 Mr. Baber, Mr. Bowerbank, Mr. Henry Catt, Mr. Faulkner, Mr. Flower, Mr. Hudson, 

 Mr. J. G. Low, Mr. S. J. Mackie, Dr. Mantell, Mr. H. Taylor, and Mr. Wetherell, whose 

 names will be frequently mentioned in the course of the work, together with those of 

 others, who may be kind enough to lend me similar assistance. I have also to thank 

 Mr. Morris most especially for his valuable assistance in determining many obscure 

 species, and Mr. S. P. Woodward, for notes relating to specimens in the British Museum, 

 and for many drawings of parts requiring particular accuracy. 



In giving the generic characters of Fossil Shells, it seems unnecessary to add 

 descriptions of the Animals supposed to have inhabited and formed them ; since such 

 descriptions must be more or less conjectural, and information on this head is amply 

 and more fitly provided by writers on the recent branches of Natural History. The 

 Palaeontologist must be contented with descriptions of the shell only, such as were 

 furnished by the earlier school of Conchologists. The student who desires information 

 about the Molluscous inhabitants of recent Shells, should consult the ' History of British 

 Mollusca and their Shells,' by Forbes and Hanley, and the ' Figures of Molluscous Animals' 

 by Mrs. Gray, or he will find in the ' Rudimentary Treatise of Recent and Fossil Shells' 

 by S. P. Woodward a large amount of information condensed into a small and most 

 economical form. 



