DATES OF CONRAD. 
217 
Conrad reserved the right to describe the new species he 
might collect, in the publication he had begun the previous 
year and of which two numbers had appeared. 
Mr. Lea, having completed some work on the Unios upon 
which he was engaged, began to prepare for publication a 
paper on the fossils which he had received from Judge Tait. 
Mr. Conrad appears to have spent little time elsewhere 
before proceeding to the rich deposit at Claiborne, from 
whence he sent descriptions of a number of new forms to¬ 
gether with specimens to Dr. Morton and Mr. Say at Phila¬ 
delphia. It is probable that these specimens were made up 
into sets and partly distributed to the subscribers and partly 
offered for sale. The descriptions were printed under the 
direction of Messrs. Say and Morton as No. 3 of the “ Fossils 
of the Tertiary formations,” and duplicate sets of the fossils 
were offered for sale by an advertisement on the back of the 
cover of that number. 
About this time it became known that Mr. Lea was work¬ 
ing on the Claiborne fauna, and the friends of Conrad, Messrs. 
Say and Morton, jumped to the conclusion that Mr. Conrad’s 
rights were being invaded, though as a matter of fact Mr. 
Lea was working on material received before Conrad left for 
the south. Very hurriedly, to preserve the rights of priority 
for Conrad, Messrs. Say and Morton prepared brief diagnoses 
of many of Conrad’s species and published them as No. 4 of 
the “ Fossils of the Tertiary formation ” between the time Mr. 
Lea presented his paper to the Academy of Natural Sciences 
and the date of the actual publication of Lea’s volume.* Their 
publication was made in Conrad’s name, although I have 
been assured that Conrad never saw a line of it until after 
the paper was printed and distributed. But, of course, as it 
was made by his patrons and intimate friends, Messrs. Morton 
and Say, and for the purpose of preserving his rights as they 
supposed, he shouldered the responsibility on his return ; the 
more so, as it doubtless appeared to him that his friends 
* Contributions to Geology, by Isaac Lea [etc.] Philadelphia: Carey, 
Lea and Blanchard, 1833. viii. 227 pp. 8°, with six plates. 
