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Show 730 DR. J. E. GRAY ON THE CALYPTR^ID^E. [June 27, those of other species, and thus the identity of the nomenclature might be destroyed or rendered doubtful. It is to be hoped that some day this magnificent collection of shells in the British Museum may be studied scientifically, and all their nominal and dealers' species be reduced to synonyms, and eventually allowed to drop out of the catalogue, to which the greater part of them ought never to have been admitted. To attempt to do this to some extent in certain families is the one of the objects of this paper. I have not attempted in these notes to give a general synonymy of the species ; but I have only added after the name of each species a list of the names and their authors that are attached to the specimens of the species described in Mr. Cuming's collection, which are to be presumed to be the types of the species described or figured under these names by the author quoted. In some instances the state of the specimen named by the author renders the determination uncertain; then I have added a mark of doubt before the names. At the commencement of this century shells were generally arranged according to the Linnean system, and Dillwyn's * Species of Shells' was one of the best works published, and Wood's 'Illustrated Catalogue' was a useful and cheap collection of figures; and the system suited very well for the small number of species then known. Some of the older collectors preferred to use Humphrey's catalogue, in which many modern genera were sketched out, rather than the heterogeneous collection of species that were crowded in the Linnean genera. Whenever a person had a large collection to arrange he found, like Humphrey, that the shells fell into natural groups that were recognized by the public, who had given them vernacular names. Thus Lichtenstein in Berlin, Schumacher in Copenhagen, and Lamarck in Paris, each having a large collection to arrange, proposed new groups of species, or genera, and a new arrangement of the genera. Lamarck, who had been educated as a botanist, set to work to describe the species in the genera which he proposed; and that gave a preponderance to his system. The use of the Lamarckian system was first introduced into England by m y predecessor, Mr. Children, who arranged the shells in the British Museum on that system, and published a translation of Lamarck's * Genera,' illustrated with a figure of each. Sowerby and Couch published similar works. And more lately the late Mr. Woodward, who seems to have been disturbed at the rapid progress that the knowledge of the animals and shells were making in this country, published his manual, which is written chiefly from a palaeontologist's point of view, trying to stem the current; and the manner in which his work has been received, and is still spoken of, is a proof that he well understood the calibre of the collectors both of recent and fossil shells. When the collection of shells was arranged in the eastern gallery of the British Museum, which had been built for the National Gallery, |
