'250 History of Conclwlogy- 



wealthy amateur, and which, though too often occupying a promi- 

 nent place in the history of conchology, have little merit excepting 

 what they derive from the draughtsman and engraver. Hence also 

 the repeated attempts on the part of the more studious to arrange 

 the objects in quest after some novel or more convenient system, 

 for without a regular specification of their contents it was evident 

 no correct idea could be imparted of the extent and worth of the 

 collection. 



In indicating the progress of ' Method,' however, it is necessary 

 to go back a little. We have seen that Aristotle had three orders 

 of Testacea, — Univalves, Bivalves and the Turbinated, — but the 

 class itself and these divisions were loosely defined ; and the same 

 vagueness is to be found in the writings of those authors who fol- 

 lowed his method. Perhaps Dr Walter Charleton, Physician in 

 Ordinary to Charles II. was the first who had a full conviction of 

 the importance of system, but his attempt to arrange the Mollusca 

 is very faulty.* The Limaces he places with apodous insects ; and 

 aquatic animals being divided as usual into the sanguineous and 

 exsanguineous, the remaining molluscans are arranged under two 

 classes — viz. the mollia or molluscula and the testacea. The first 

 embraces all the cuttles and the Lepus marinus or Aplysia ; the se- 

 cond the shelled tribes whose primary sections are the same as those 

 of Aristotle's, while his genera, in general without definitions, rest 

 on characters of little or no value. Jean-Daniel Major, Profes- 

 sor of Practical Medicine in the University of Keil, in the dutchy of 

 Holstein, was the next to make the attempt, (1675,) which is pro- 

 nounced by two critics, to whose opinion much deference has been 

 shewn, to be " infinitely too complicated and ramifying to admit of 

 any useful application." Sibbald, Grew, Bonanni, Lister, Langius, 

 Hebenstreit, Tournefort, D'Argenville, and Klein are perhaps the 

 principal who followed in their wake, but it is evident that they had 

 all entered on their task without a previous study of what the real 

 object and use of method was, what principles were to guide them 

 in framing the various sections, or what the relative bearing of these 

 divisions on one another should be. The division of shells primarily 

 into Multivalve, Bivalve, and Univalve had perhaps superseded the 

 Aristotelian, and many new divisions of secondary rate were of 

 course invented, but they were arbitrary, founded on no common 

 principle, either too lax or too complex to be applicable in practice, 

 cumbersome to the memory, and clumsy in writing. To analyse 



* Onomastikon Zoikon. Lond. 1671. 4to. 

 3 



