PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 
Although Conchology has been a favourite pursuit from very early periods of civilization, 
yet its great value as a science has but recently been rendered manifest, from its utility in 
connection with Geology, in identifying strata which are of ancient or more recent formation. For 
we find on investigating the crust of our Globe, that whole races of Mollusks have existed and 
become extinct during different geological epochs ; and that it is only in the more recent deposits 
that species identical with those existing on the land, and in the present seas, are to be met with ; 
hence the importance of a knowledge of Recent as well as Fossil Conchology. This fact, as 
well as the general importance of this branch of study, has been acknowledged by the greatest 
Modern Geologists. 
Up to the present time no work has appeared embracing half the species which have been 
detected in Great Britain and Ireland, and it was with a view to supply the desideratum, that 
the Author undertook the present, as well as its sister work “ Illustrations of the Fossil 
Conchology of Great Britain and Ireland which, together, embrace pretty complete 
Illustrations and Descriptions of all the species. Ancient as well as Recent, which have been met 
with in our Islands. 
The general arrangement adopted in the following work is that of Lamarck, according to the 
descending scale, with such slight alterations and the addition of some new Genera, which more 
recent observations have rendered necessary, since the time of that celebrated Malacologist. The 
Author has been more solicitous to improve a classification, which has been almost universally 
adopted by European as well as Transatlantic Conchologists, rather than to attempt a system of 
his own, like other recent writers on this branch of Natural History ; all of whom have signally 
failed in founding a classification likely to supercede that of Lamarck. It is to be lamented 
that ambition should prompt naturalists to change established classification and nomenclature, as 
nothing tends so much to retard the progress of science. 
When this Second Edition was commenced, the Author contemplated giving reduced 
Illustrations of one Animal of all the British genera, which had been investigated ; but, upon 
more mature consideration, it appeared to him that small figures could not fail to prove unsatis- 
factory to the Malacologist, and to represent them the size of life would run out the book to a 
b 
