CONCHOLOGY 



intended. It assumes as a conclusion that Linnasus committed 

 an error in confounding these two genera, without informing us in 

 what state of arrangement Linnaeus found them. It may be inferred 

 from this that they had been more accurately discriminated before 

 his time, or on the contrary, that they never had been classed in any 

 form, and that it was the want of knowledge in Linnaeus which led 

 him to confound shells together that were generically distinct. But 

 whichever we are to understand, the conclusion is, that Linnaeus had 

 confounded them, and that it remained for Bruguiere and Lamarck 

 to reform those errors of Linnaeus, which all later Naturalists had 

 left uncorrected, if not unobserved. Now really this view of the 

 subject is not fairly taken if such an inference be intended. The 

 result of a very little enquiry among the authors who preceded 

 Linnaeus, or were immediately subsequent to him, will assure us of 

 the truth of this ; and will convince us beyond a doubt, that the 

 discrimination of neither of those authors was necessary either to 

 furnish the Naturalists of the present day with the term Terebratula ; 

 to determine the diiferences that exist between them and the Anomiae, 

 or to fix the characters by which the Terebratulae are distinguished. 



The Anomia genus, instead of being devised by Linnaeus, or 

 Terebratula in particular, owing its invention to any modern writer, 

 have been both so long established that the greatest difficulty is to 

 determine where in the retrospect of authors our enquiries are to 

 cease. Without proceeding further back than the last two centuries, 

 it may be observed that Fdbius Columna in his work "De Purpura," 

 pubUshed at Rome in the year 161 6, speaks of the Anomiae; he calls 

 them Conchoe rariores Jnomicc, and from that period at least the 

 term Anomia has been received among Naturalists. Nor is the term 

 Terebratula of much later origin. Da Costa in his Elements of 



