£ ^rS SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTIONa AN INDEX TO THE MUSEUM BOLTENIANUM BY WILLIAM HEALEY DALL ]^^^^kl^^\^ <** (Publication 236)0) APR I J ^*L\40^ CITY OF WASHINGTON PUBLISHED BY THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION 1915 SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION LOT AN INDEX TO THE MUSEUM BOLTENIANUM BY WILLIAM HEALEY DALL PER\ (Publication 2360) CITY OF WASHINGTON PUBLISHED BY THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION 1915 BALTIMORE, MD., U. S. A. AN INDEX TO THE MUSEUM BOLTENIANUM By WILLIAM HEALEY DALL The Museum Boltenianum is a publication which, until recent years, has been little known. It represents the arrangement of his cabinet of shells by J. F. Bolten, of Hamburg, a lifelong student of conchology who was dissatisfied with the crude method of Linnaeus. He died without publishing his system which was issued at Hamburg in 1798, at the expense of the family, with supplementary references by a friend of conchological tastes, Llerr Peter Friedrich Roeding, and with a Latin introductory by the Abbe Lichtenstein. It was the hope of the family that the publication would not only perpetuate the father's researches, but might lead to the pur- chase of the collection as a whole by some museum or individual. That it was brought to the attention of scientific men of the time is evident from the fact that Lamarck adopted several of Bolten's generic names a year or two later, though without giving their author credit for them. Some twenty years passed and no sale in block having been made, the family decided to dispose of the collection by auction in separate lots. A new edition of the catalogue was issued with four lithographic plates of rare species, supplemented by a cata- logue of minerals and one of objects of art, the whole to be sold by Johannes Noodt, auctioneer, who supplied a " Vorwort " and reprinted Lichtenstein's Latin preface but omitted the preface by Roeding. This publication formed an octavo of four unpaged leaves, 156 pages, and four plates. It was issued in January, 1819. The original issue was a i6mo of viii and 199 pages without " plates, and is stated on the title-page to be Pars secunda " ; the " Pars prima " having contained probably the two catalogues of minerals and art objects which follow the shells in the edition of 1819. The publication and wider distribution of the sale catalogue again attracted the attention of conchologists to the Boltenian system, but the Lamarckian classification had by this time been " 2 SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION generally accepted, no rules of priority were at that time in opera- tion, and the attempts of a few systematists later to recognize Bolten's names brought out little but adverse criticism. Of the European naturalists who espoused his cause Morch of Copen- hagen and Henry and Arthur Adams of London were the most prominent. Sylvanus Hanley also noticed the book. With the increasing complexity of nomenclature the observance of the rule of priority for scientific names became an obvious necessity. As the negligent methods of the earlier systematists had pre- vailed for more than a century and many untenable names had become familiar, the reforms required met much opposition which has not yet entirely subsided. Yet much progress toward the establishment of a practically stable nomenclature for the Mollusca has been made. The fact that the edition of 1798 was the pub- lication of a manuscript and not an " auctioneer's catalogue disposes of one of several fallacious criticisms. The two editions of the Museum Boltenianum having been long out of print, it became of much importance to systematists to have the work reprinted, and, by private subscription, aided by a small grant from the American Association for the Advance- ment of Science, a phototypic reproduction from the British Museum copy of the 1798 edition was prepared and issued by 1 Sherborn and Sykes in 1906. The funds in hand did not permit the addition of an index to the multitude of names contained in this small volume. The present writer has therefore, in his leisure moments compiled one. So many of these names are the first binomial names applied to the species of shells they refer to, that the existence of some easy and feasible method of detecting them is urgently needed by systematic workers on the Mollusca. As will be seen by Roeding's preface, in order that Bolten's specific names might be identified, the former added to the original manuscript, references to Gmelin's edition of the Systema Naturae of Linnaeus (1792) when the species had been named therein, and for these and the new names also gave references to figures in various iconographies, especially to the great Monograph en- 1 C. Davies Sherborn and E. R. Sykes, British Museum (Nat. History), Mar., 1906. 8°. Published by F. W. Reader, 5 Lambs Conduit Street, London, England. INDEX MUSEUM BOLTENIANUM 3 titled the Conchylien Cabinet by Martini and Chemnitz. If these authors had adopted the Linnaean system of nomenclature as did their friend and contemporary Lorenz Spengler, an enormous amount of trouble would have been saved those who came after them. However, in 1840 Dr. Ludwig Pfeiffer published a criti- 2 cal register of the species figured in the Conchylien Cabinet, in which he supplied the binary names of Linnaeus, Gmelin, Lamarck and others applicable to the species figured in the Cabinet. Un- fortunately, PfeifTer was not at that time acquainted with Bolten's work and Bolten's names, which precede those of Lamarck in many cases, are not referred to. Bolten's names are binomial in the Linnaean sense, the genera have frequently brief diagnostic characters in Latin with usually a German translation. His specific names, by the pious care of his friend Roeding, are accompanied by references to Gmelin's Sys- tema and to figures in the Conchylien Cabinet and elsewhere, in nearly all cases. When Roeding could find no figures correspond- ing to a shell the name remains " nude " and of course invalid. Still for the sake of completeness these names, properly discrimi- nated from the others by a dagger mark (t ), are included in the index now oflered. But the vast majority of Bolten's names cor- respond to the requirements of the International code of Nomen- clature and are unquestionably valid. Synonyms are here indi- cated by an asterisk. When no authority is cited, the name is of Bolten. The serial species-number under each of Bolten's genera is enclosed in parentheses, followed by the page number of the edition of 1798. There are about 30 missing serial numbers omitted by a printer's error in the original and 46 serial numbers are duplicated by an analogous error. I have also included from Pf eiffer's register his names for all the species figured in the Con- chylien Cabinet and cited by Roeding. These names, with the author of each properly indicated are included on the assumption that Pfeifler's identifications are to be relied on. A list of the abbreviations used is given at the end of this introduction. In order that all the facts should be at the disposition of those who may consult this index, a translation follows by Mrs. Marian Baker, instructor in Latin at the Central High School of Wash- 2 Kritisches Register zu iMartini und Chemnitz's systematischem Konchy- lien-Kabinet, Kassel, Th. Fischer, 1840, pp. viii, 112, 8°. 4 SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION ington, D. C, of Lichtenstein's Latin address to the reader in the 1798 edition. Also a translation of Roeding's German preface to the same edition, and a translation of the preface of Johannes Noodt to the edition of 18 19, when the work was reprinted for use in disposing by auction of the collection. These German trans- lations are due to the courtesy of Prof. Paul Bartsch of the Medical Department of Howard University. To both these trans- lators I am under obligations, for relieving me of any anxiety as to the strict accuracy of my own rendering of the original into English. Bolten's classification was purely conchological and based upon form, rather than minor if perhaps more important characters.. Yet it was far in advance as a natural system of any previously proposed, including that of Linnaeus, which was at that time in general use. It remained for the combined researches of Lamarck and Cuvier, 18 years later, to propose a system based on anatomical structure with results which in many cases confirmed those derived by the acute intelligence of Bolten from a study of the forms of the shells. The following abbreviations have been used for the titles of works in which figures or names are referred to by Roeding. The relation of the Lamarckian and other modern specific names to those of Bolten in the Index, is indicated by the serial and page number of Bolten, which immediately follow the Lamarckian reference on the same line. A review of the relation of the generic names of Bolten to subsequently proposed names will be found in the Journal of Conchology (Leeds), volume XI, No. 10, pp. 294- 297, April, 1906, where types are assigned to such as are not already provided with them according to the rules of nomenclature. LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS USED IN THE INDEX Arg Argenville, Conchyliologie, 1772. Beech. Voy....Gray and Sowerby in the Zoology of the Voyage of the Blossom, Capt. Beechey, 1839. Born Musei Csesarei Vindobonensis Testacea, 1780. Ch Martini and Chemnitz, Neues Syst. Conchylien Cabinet, I-XI, 1769-95. Conch. Ill Sowerby, Conchological Illustrations, I-II, 1832-37. Da Costa British Conchology, 1778. Besh Deshayes' edition of Lamarck's Animaux sans Vertebres, VI-XI, 1835-45.