MONOGRAPH 



BRITISH JURASSIC GASTEROPODA, 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 



Since the publication of the Supplement to the Great-Oolite Mollusca in 1863 

 no attempt has been made to deal with any portion of the Jurassic Gasteropoda in 

 the works of the Palseontographical Society. It is true that the " British [Jurassic] 

 Belemnites " formed the subject of a Monograph by the late Professor Phillips, 

 whilst the Lias Ammonites have had ample justice done to them quite recently by 

 the late Dr. Wright, and the Jurassic (as well as Cretaceous) Trigonim by the late 

 Dr. Lycett. But the Mesozoic Gasteropoda have been singularly neglected, so that, 

 in point of fact, there has been no Monograph dealing either with them or with the 

 Pelecypoda " as a whole " since Lycett's last work, published four and twenty 

 years ; and to this long lapse of time we must add nine years since the date of 

 the latest issues of the Great-Oolite Mollusca. One might almost imagine 

 that this admirable Monograph, in conjunction with the no less valuable Supple- 

 ment, had exhausted the subject of the Mollusca of the Lower Oolites, although 

 professing to deal with the upper or Bathonian 1 division only. 



Each age has its own speciality and its own way of looking at things. Thus 

 the middle of the nineteenth century witnessed the appearance of the standard 

 works of Deslongchamps, Goldfuss, D'Orbigny, Morris and Lycett, and many 

 others. Those were the days when the discovery and naming of fossil Mollusca 

 formed an exceedingly popular branch of science. But for some time past our 

 biologists and palaeontologists have been engaged in the more difficult task of 

 working out the structure and affinities of the lower and obscurer classes. Thus, 

 for nearly a quarter of a century, whilst the Sponges, Corals, Foraminifera, and 



1 It will be remembered that a few of the Gasteropoda figured in this work, such as " Pterocera " 

 Bentleyi, and the shells in Plate XV (from Yorkshire), belong to the Bajocian or Inferior Oolite divi- 

 sion of the Lower Oolites. 

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