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Show 1867.] DR. J. E. GRAY ON THE CALYPTRJEID.5*. 731 then used for the mineral collections, and at length given up to the zoological collections in 1840, I arranged the species in what appeared to me natural groups, and took care to find out the names that previous writers had given to those groups, and gave the characters of the groups and genera in a ' Synopsis' which was sold in the Hall for a shilling. This proceeding at first excited the anger of the persons who had adopted the Lamarckian system, some of whom had a vested interest in works written on that system. Knowing but little of the history of the science, they persisted in believing that all the groups were creations of m y own, and denounced me as the manufacturer of an immense number of useless genera. Thus in Sowerby's * Manual of Conchology' there are numbers of genera referred to m e which were formed when I was a child, or even before I was born, and which often are only quoted to be objected to. Yet that manual is a very useful work for any one commencing the study of conchology, as it contains a very good series of figures of many more genera than are to be found in any other English work on the subject. Observing the ignorance that generally existed on the subject, I compiled a list of genera of recent shells, giving the type of each genus. This was published in the * Proceedings' of this Society for 1847, and contained in a few pages a condensed account of the labours of most conchologists that had written before that date. This showed how many minds had been occupied with the arrangement of shells,-and also that there were 810 well established genera, many having several names, and that only a very small proportion of them had been separated or named by myself. About the same time Mrs. Gray published, for the use of students, etchings of the animals of shells which she had been collecting for m y use from various sources. The publication of these two works, and the almost simultaneous appearance of a work * O n the Synonyma of the Genera of Mollusca' by Hermannsen, gave a great impulse to this study both in this country and the continent. Dr. Philippi, during his voyage to Chili, compiled a - Manual of Mollusca,' chiefly based on m y * List of Genera.' Then the Messrs. Adams commenced a work on the * Genera of Mollusca,' based on the same list, and on the collection arranged according to it in the British Museum. And more lately, Dr. Chenu seems to have felt that the time had arrived when the French conchologists might be inclined to progress beyond the system proposed by Lamarck, and published a ' Manuel de Conchyliologie,' in 2 vols. 8vo, illustrated with figures of several thousand species. This work is based on m y ' List of Genera,' and on the * Genera' of Messrs. Adams, and is certainly one of the cheapest and most useful manuals for the use of the shell-collector and malacologist that have yet been compiled. The collection of shells exhibited in the British Museum first showed to the conchologist and the palaeontologist the advantage of the more scientific arrangement of the mollusca and their shells into |