PREFACE. 
xiii 
in the superb museums of the metropolis, 
that the following little treatise has been 
put together. The scientific reader will 
find in it very little of novelty, and not any 
of a theme, which fills too many pages of 
some conchologists, the invention of new 
systems, and the demolition of old ones; 
the disregard of former, and the abuse of 
contemporary writers. It aspires, indeed, 
to the approbation of the well-instructed, 
as an useful manual, and as a correct 
epitome of the science of Testaceology in 
its present state. To more than this it 
does not pretend. 
To the great naturalist Linneeus, whose 
comprehensive mind seems, in many in- 
stances, to have anticipated the objections 
which envy or ignorance would raise against 
