MINERAL CONCHOLOGY, 
9 
Letter from Mr. James De Carle Sowerby, on the subject of the 
French Edition of Mineral Conchology .* 
Camden Town , July 27, 1839. 
Sir, 
It is hardly possible that I should remain silent 
after seeing, from the strictures you have made on the French 
edition of my ‘ Mineral Conchology,’ the great interest you 
feel in the cause of that class of authors, whose works are si- 
milar in character to this publication. And feeling practically 
that unless some protection be afforded them by at least their 
brother authors, and the scientific portion of the public, they 
must soon he reduced to that small number who are suffi- 
ciently opulent to pay for the satisfaction they experience 
in their own minds, in being able to contribute to the ad- 
vancement of knowledge, I beg to thank you for the man- 
ly way in which you have advocated what appears to me to 
be the true and lasting interest of science, — the encouragement 
of original publications, in opposition to the specious but 
fleeting advantages which cheap piracies possess. Such 
works only tend to convert what would otherwise be a flow- 
ing stream, into a stagnant lake, by cutting off the springs 
which had given it life. 
Mons. Agassiz has, however, proposed to revise and cor- 
rect the work in question ; a proposal which, if carried fully 
into effect, would certainly be beneficial to the study of Geo- 
logy : but in many instances it will be found that his transla- 
tion perpetuates the errors of the original. 
The following short history of the work will explain why 
revision and correction are necessary, and also account for 
the inequalities (justly observed by M. Agassiz) which occur 
in the execution of the different parts of it. This statement 
is not offered as an excuse for the errors, many of which have 
been corrected in the later volumes, but to show that such er- 
rors were mostly unavoidable at the time the work was in pro- 
gress, and also as being likely to interest all who take a part 
in the discussion you have excited. 
The first number of the ‘ Mineral Conchology ’ was pub- 
lished by the late Mr. James Sowerby, in June, 1812, two 
years before Lamarck’s ‘ Systeme’ appeared. The author be- 
ing much more partial to the pictorial department, referred 
the principal part of the text to his two eldest sons (myself 
and Mr. G. B. Sowerby), while he executed the plates wholly 
himself: and he continued his task regularly, even during a 
long and painful illness, until within three or four days of his 
*Mag. Nat. Hist. Vol. iii. n. s. p. 418. 
