2 SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION 



generally accepted, no rules of priority were at that time in opera- 

 tion, and the attempts of a few systematists later to recognize 

 Bolten's names brought out little but adverse criticism. Of the 

 European naturalists who espoused his cause Morch of Copen- 

 hagen and Henry and Arthur Adams of London were the most 

 prominent. Sylvanus Hanley also noticed the book. 



With the increasing complexity of nomenclature the observance 

 of the rule of priority for scientific names became an obvious 

 necessity. 



As the negligent methods of the earlier systematists had pre- 

 vailed for more than a century and many untenable names had 

 become familiar, the reforms required met much opposition which 

 has not yet entirely subsided. Yet much progress toward the 

 establishment of a practically stable nomenclature for the Mollusca 

 has been made. The fact that the edition of 1798 was the pub- 

 lication of a manuscript and not an " auctioneer's catalogue " 

 disposes of one of several fallacious criticisms. 



The two editions of the Museum Boltenianum having been long 

 out of print, it became of much importance to systematists to 

 have the work reprinted, and, by private subscription, aided by 

 a small grant from the American Association for the Advance- 

 ment of Science, a phototypic reproduction from the British 

 Museum copy of the 1798 edition was prepared and issued by 

 Sherborn and Sykes in 1906. 1 The funds in hand did not permit 

 the addition of an index to the multitude of names contained in 

 this small volume. The present writer has therefore, in his leisure 

 moments compiled one. So many of these names are the first 

 binomial names applied to the species of shells they refer to, that 

 the existence of some easy and feasible method of detecting them 

 is urgently needed by systematic workers on the Mollusca. 



As will be seen by Roeding's preface, in order that Bolten's 

 specific names might be identified, the former added to the original 

 manuscript, references to Gmelin's edition of the Systema Naturae 

 of Linnaeus (1792) when the species had been named therein, 

 and for these and the new names also gave references to figures 

 in various iconographies, especially to the great Monograph en- 



1 C. Davies Sherborn and E. R. Sykes, British Museum (Nat. History), 

 Mar., 1906. 8°. Published by F. W. Reader, 5 Lambs Conduit Street, 

 London, England. 



