On the Linnean Manuscript of the 'Museum Ulricæ.' By Sylvanus Hanley, Esq., F.L.S.

[Read Dec. 3, 1858.]

Not the least important result of the investigations of the Committee appointed by the Linnean Society to examine the condition of the collections and manuscripts of Linnæus, was the rediscovery of a written copy of the 'Museum Ulricæ.' The volume was manifestly, from internal evidence, a legible transcript of the original manuscript of that work, with alterations and interpolations in the peculiar handwriting of the author. It was, indubitably, the unpublished catalogue so often mentioned in the tenth edition of the 'Systema,' and contains descriptions of certain species alluded to as defined, yet, strangely enough, omitted in the printed edition. It is worthy of notice for many reasons: it corrects the frequent misprints; explains the many fallacious allusions to preceding species, their sequence being very different; it exhibits those early synonyms, which, culled from comparison with the actually described specimens, had been eventually supplanted by supposed better representations; above all, it imparts to us those original headings, or diagnoses (condensed from the subsequent details), which had been suppressed, of old, in favour of those already published in the 'Systema.'

This wholesale substitution, adopted by Linnæus, as a ready method of avoiding a tedious revision of all the headings, when he absorbed in the more comprehensive groups of his 'Systema' the members of manuscript genera he had determined to reject, involved a serious amount of confusion; for, oftentimes, the species of the two works, although designated by the same appellations, were totally distinct; and the combination of the diagnosis of the one with the details of the other displayed an array of features not known to be associated in any object in nature.

The generic arrangement exhibited in the manuscript differs essentially from that which appeared in the final edition of his 'Systema Naturæ.' As a whole, it is decidedly inferior, yet it segregates certain natural groups, such as Lyra and Cassida, the value of which have been acknowledged by all modern naturalists. The following list and sequence of the genera comprised in it, cannot, indeed, be regarded as an entire system, for certain groups, viz., Chiton, Lepas, Teredo, Sabella, and the typical forms of Mya, Mactra, and Anomia, were not at that period represented in the Museum; but it is not devoid of interest, since it manifests a transitional stage in the progressive advance to that matured scheme which was finally elaborated in the pages of his revised 'Systema.'

Besides the four genera (Chiton, Lepas, Teredo, Sabella) that were excluded from this catalogue, either from the absence of specimens, or from mistrust of their being veritable Testacea, six of the remaining 32, namely, Pholas, Mya, Mactra, Chama, Anomia, and Serpula, were likewise omitted, not being yet eliminated from Solen, Bucardium, Spondylus, Ostrea, and Dentalium. To counterbalance these, we find no less than eight subsequently abandoned groupings:

Turricula (an undefined amalgam of the long-spired species of Buccinum, Murex, and Strombus).

Lyra (the Harpa and Purpura of the Lamarckian school).

Morion (an unnatural compound of Eburna, Auricula proper, Pythia, &c.).

Strombus (a combination of the immature members of the received genus with Pyrula, Fasciolaria, and other allied forms).

Cassida (nearly the modern Cassis).

Pecten (equal to Lima and Pecten).

Chama (the Tapes of recent conchologists).

Pholas (chiefly composed of Artemis and Lucina).

It may be remarked, moreover, that the simple univalves commence, and the bivalves close the series; the exact converse of the order in which they are marshalled in the two principal editions of the 'Systema Naturæ.'

I feel assured, after a careful study of the manuscript, that the names eventually allotted to the shells of the 'Museum' did not result from a careful comparison of the royal specimens with the typical examples in the private collection of our author, but were attached to the species, either from the identity of the written and printed synonymy, or from the general accordance of their described features with the meagre characteristics enumerated in the prior publication.

The erased nomenclature of the species, however, was very dissimilar, and was scrupulously based upon a supposed identity of the specimens with those delineated by Rumphius, Klein, and d'Argenville. Assuredly at that period of his career, our author entertained the same profound respect for the laws of priority which is professed by all modern naturalists; and I hesitate not to affirm that, from the crude and inharmonious theories of his predecessors, he eliminated a system of Conchology that was better suited to the requirements of the age he lived in than any more elaborate arrangement would have been. For simplicity attracts the student, whom a more complex (even if more natural) method would repel; and for the collection of an adequate mass of materials wherewith, eventually, to build up a more symmetrical and widely-based structure, a multitude of comparatively unskilled labourers is more efficacious than a small knot of the most erudite architects.

Before inviting the attention of my readers to the original headings of the 'Museum Ulricæ,' and to my brief account of the variations in the written copy from the text of the printed version, I must premise, that it has not been my practice invariably to notice, in the summary, such trifling differences of construction as the preferential use of the ablative for the nominative case, where the verbal change involved no alteration of the precise meaning.

Museum Ludovicæ Ulricæ Reginæ.

CONCHYLIA.

CHITON, LEPAS.

Nothing relating to these two genera was found in the copy.