116 
THIRTEENTH REPORT. 
THE CONCHOLOGICAL SURVEY OF MICHIGAN. 
BRYANT WALKER. 
The conchological history of Michigan antedates 1 the state itself. The 
publication b t y Thomas Say of his celebrated article on “Conchology” in 
the first American edition of Nicholson’s Encyclopedia of Arts and 
Sciences in 1817 was the real beginning of American Conchology and is 
the cornerstone of the present elaborate and intricate structure known as 
our Systematic Conchology. 
As early as 1822, by some means not now known, a small lot of shells 
from Thunder Bay near Alpena came into the possession of Thomas Rack- 
ett, then a well-known English concliologist, who published an account of 
them in the Transactions of the Linnean Society of London of that year. 
Only seven species are enumerated and to but four of these are specific 
names given. One, Helix ( Polygyra ) monodon , still bears the name that 
he gave it; another had already been described by Say in 1817; the third 
was the circumboreal Lymndea palustris long before named by Muller 
and the fourth, Turbo fontinalis, has never been identified by any recent 
author. 
It can be said, therefore, with but little fear of contradiction, that the 
earliest reference to Michigan zoology is to be found in this attempt to 
exploit its molluscan fauna. 
Michigan became a state in 1837. And one of the first acts of the first 
legislature of the new state was the establishment of a State Geological 
Survey, with Douglas Houghton at its head as geologist and Dr. Abram 
Sager as zoologist. 
Dr. Sager had already become interested in our local mollusks, and 
as early as 1836 had supplied Conrad with Michigan material for his 
“Monograph of the Unionidw.” The results of his work in this field were 
embodied in his report, which bears date, January 12, 1839. It is a 
simple list, without descriptions or localities, of 75 named species. 
The reorganization of the Geological Survey in 1859, brought about 
the appointment of the late Dr. Manly Miles as state zoologist, who, in 
1860, published the second catalogue of Michigan mollusca. This, in 
addition to a list of 161 species, included a few explanatory notes and 
descriptions of two supposed new species. 
From this time until the establishment of the present Biological Sur- 
vey in 1905, there was no official recognition of recent conchology by the 
state authorities. But there was, nevertheless, a steady increase in the 
knowledge of our fauna through the work of individual collectors. In 
1850, A. 0. Currier came to Grand Rapids from Troy, N. Y., and in the 
course of the next thirty years, with the assistance of Dr. W. IT. DeCamp, 
J. A. McNeil and L. H. Streng, made a most thorough exploration of 
Kent county and did a very considerable amount of collecting elsewhere 
in the state. The results of their la bore were embodied in Currier’s 
catalogue of 1868, which listed 171 sj>ecies and DeOamp’s of 1881, which 
increased the number to 221 species. 
