A manual of the land and fresh-water shells of the British Islands / with figures of each of the kinds. By William Turton, M. D.

  • Turton, William, 1762-1835.
Date:
1840
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A manual of the land and fresh-water shells of the British Islands / with figures of each of the kinds. By William Turton, M. D. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    and Sweden; and the authors of the latter countries would as readily have adopted the names of Mon- tagu as those of Draparnaud, if they had been ac- quainted with the work of the former, which, it should be recollected, was published at a period when we were excluded from the Continent by an unhappy war. It ought to be, and, judging from the attention which our botanists and zoologists pay to continental works, I believe it is, the desire of the naturalists of this country to give to each author his just due, let him belong to what country he may; and, eventually, this high position must be taken even by those (if any such there be) who are now restricted by narrow national prejudices from consulting the works of their contemporaries in other countries. It is these con- siderations which have induced me to take the course I have adopted. I believe, moreover, that if I had followed that recommended by Mr. Alder and Mr. Jeffreys, I should have experienced continual diffi- culties in determining whether the name of a species used by German or French authors was the most generally adopted; and this difficulty would have gone on daily increasing, inasmuch as the Germans are paying more and more attention to natural sci- ence, and their language is becoming more generally studied in this country. ; A short description of the animals, and a few notes on their habits, have been added; and this new feature in the work might have been greatly extended, had it not been feared to add too much to its bulk. Great care has been taken in correcting such false impressions as may have been produced by over- sights in the works of preceding English writers on B 2 ‘