This is one among the number of those very choice accessions to the Conchological knowledge of the last century, that was derived from the scientific labours of our first circumnavigators in the Southern Ocean: it occurred to them upon the coast of New Zealand, not in any abundance, but so far plentifully that after the Banksian Cabinet was supplied there were several specimens to spare for distribution among the friends of Sir Joseph Banks, Dr. Solander, and Captain Cook. From this little store the species passed in the first instance into several collections, and among others into that of the late Duchess of Portland, Dr. Chauncey, Mr. Cracherode, Mr. G. Humphrey, and some others. It has since occurred, but not in any abundance to later voyagers in those seas. And it is reputed also to have been met with in the Straits of Magellan.
The specimen of this rare shell which we have delineated, and which always was considered as one of the largest of its species known, once constituted part of the Testaceological collection of Sir Ashton Lever, having been presented to that eminent collector by Captain Cook, at the time of his return to England after his first voyage. There is a small hole pierced through the upper valve of this shell, and which, in the absence of all other information, induces the persuasion of its having been originally suspended like several other shells we have already mentioned, as an ornament or appendage to the dress of some New Zealander; the aperture being so designed that the two valves could easily have been kept together by means of a string passing through this hole of the upper valve, and the opening in the beak of the lower one. The animal inhabitant is probably eaten by the New Zealanders, who besides being cannibals, subsist chiefly upon the marine productions of their shores, which their wives and female children obtain daily for them by swimming and diving into the sea. There is a rare species found in the Mediterranean Sea, Anomia Vitrea of Gmelin, which nearly approaches this species in point of size, and is eagerly sought after, we are told, by the people of those parts as a delicious food. We should, however, imagine from its scarcity, that it is only at the tables of the rich that this luxurious repast appears.
In adopting the genus Terebratula for the shell before us, some explanation may be expected for our departure from the Linnæan classification, for in the system of that author it is one of the Anomia Tribe, the term and character of Terebratula not being recognised by that author as generically distinct from the Anomia. Our reasons for this deviation shall be explained as briefly as it is possible: from the nature of those remarks, and the extent of enquiry with which it is connected, this cannot however be comprised within very slender limits.
In the Linnæan arrangement, the Anomia form a very comprehensive genus, and since in particular the fossil species are included it should certainly have been divided into several distinct sections or families in order to embrace the different tribes of those shells, which according to the character Linnæus has given of the genus must necessarily be referred to it. It is impossible without some modification of this kind to reconcile Anomia Ephippium and Cepa, with Anomia Caput Serpentinus or Terebratula, or either of them with A. Placenta; and there are besides these some other families which do not well accord, and which might perhaps be separated into distinct genera with great advantage, the fossil kinds especially, which are very numerous and much diversified in structure. It cannot be very material whether they be so divided into genera or be placed in different families under the general appellation of Anomiæ: they are obviously very dissimilar and should be kept apart, and we have examples of both these modes of classing the Anomiæ among the early Naturalists.
A late french writer, M. Bosc, speaking of this tribe of shells, observes, that Linnæus having confounded the Terebratules with the Anomies, Bruguière first established their differences, and Lamarck had fixed their characters. This observation is not sufficiently explicit, and may possibly imply more than the author of it has intended. It assumes as a conclusion that Linnæus committed an error in confounding these two genera, without informing us in what state of arrangement Linnæus found them. It may be inferred from this that they had been more accurately discriminated before his time, or on the contrary, that they never had been classed in any form, and that it was the want of knowledge in Linnæus which led him to confound shells together that were generically distinct. But whichever we are to understand, the conclusion is, that Linnæus had confounded them, and that it remained for Bruguière and Lamarck to reform those errors of Linnæus, which all later Naturalists had left uncorrected, if not unobserved. Now really this view of the subject is not fairly taken if such an inference be intended. The result of a very little enquiry among the authors who preceded Linnæus, or were immediately subsequent to him, will assure us of the truth of this; and will convince us beyond a doubt, that the discrimination of neither of those authors was necessary either to furnish the Naturalists of the present day with the term Terebratula; to determine the differences that exist between them and the Anomiæ, or to fix the characters by which the Terebratulæ are distinguished.
The Anomia genus, instead of being devised by Linnæus, or Terebratula in particular, owing its invention to any modern writer, have been both so long established that the greatest difficulty is to determine where in the retrospect of authors our enquiries are to cease. Without proceeding further back than the last two centuries, it may be observed that Fabius Columna in his work “De Purpura,” published at Rome in the year 1616, speaks of the Anomiæ; he calls them Conchæ rariores Anomiæ, and from that period at least the term Anomia has been received among Naturalists. Nor is the term Terebratula of much later origin. Da Costa in his Elements of Conchology informs us that from the time of Fabius Columna the word Anomia had become universal, that is as a general denomination for all the shells which Linnæus subsequently placed together under that name. The term Terebratula was given, says this writer, by Gualtieri; in plate 96 of his work, Gualtieri figures three recent kinds, and has made a particular genus for them, which he calls Terebratula. And it is further added in another place “the Anomiæ are bivalves with unequal valves, and never eared, the beak of the largest or under valve is greatly produced, and rises or curves over the beak of the smaller or upper valve, and is perforated or pierced through like a tube, from which particular they have also obtained the name of Terebratulæ.”
These remarks sufficiently establish the circumstance of the term Anomia, being a comprehensive title for all the shells which Linnæus subsequently placed together under that name, and also shews that we are not indebted to either Bruguière or Lamarck for discriminating the Terebratulæ. We can ever go further back in this particular than Da Costa has done, for that able author is mistaken in supposing Gualtieri to be the first writer who had proposed the genus Terebratula. Gualtieri published his work in the year 1724, and we happen to possess among other valuable MSS. of the celebrated Antiquarian, Hearne, the original copy of Lluid’s Lithophylacia Britannica, as corrected for the press, dated Montgomery, 1698, in which the genus Terebratula is distinctly named: and this, as it appears from the date, was more than fifty years before the time of Gualtieri; and we have also the authority of our english Lister in 1694 for the like distinction. All these writers, it will be observed, preceded Klein, who has in a particular manner described the genus Terebratula in his Methodus Ostraceologia, published in 1753, but in which he does not speak of himself as having invented that term. “Terebratulas, Luidiano titulo, vocamus Diaconchas anomalas, rostro parterebrato, vid. Nomencl. Litholog. Promotum hoc titulo.” His genus Concha ΤΡΊΛΟΒΟΣ, genus Concha Adunca, genus Bursula, and genus Globus, are all sub-divisions of the Anomiæ Conchæ of other writers, divided according to their forms and other peculiarities, and in which particular attention is paid to the perforation or non-perforation of the beak; Trilobos being distinguished as “vertice integro,” Bursula as Terebratulæformes rostro non perforato, &c. And we may lastly mention that from some original MSS. of Da Costa, in our possession, it appears that Anomia was a general term for the whole family, and Terebratula Anomiæ lævis was the term by which the English and other Naturalists, long prior to the middle of last century, were accustomed to distinguish the same kind of shells which in the modern nomenclature of Conchology is also named generically Terebratula. Da Costa, as Librarian of the Royal Society, was in the habit of correspondence with the learned men of his time throughout Europe, and his local knowledge from this circumstance, though never committed to the press, is not likely to be disputed.
We could proceed yet further, but enough has surely been advanced to shew that so far from Linnæus having confounded the Terebratula with the Anomia, he left them precisely as he found them, placing them after the example of his predecessors, under the comprehensive term of Anomia, which they had assigned to them. And we have also said enough to prove that to ascribe the Genus Terebratula to either Bruguière or Lamarck can result only from our ignorance of that information which in former days was regarded as the best criterion of an able Naturalist, a correct knowledge of the labours of his predecessors.
Under all its circumstances it may be a matter of some indifference to the scientific Naturalist whether in the arrangement of the Anomiæ we follow the concise method of the old writers and Linnæus among the number, or the diffuse distribution of later writers. If we place them in different families according to their characters, whether regarded as sectional distinctions of Anomia, or as distinct genera, we shall at least produce some consistency in the arrangement. But there is yet another mode of arrangement which appears to be the favourite theme with some Conchologists of the present day, and which it may be proper in this place to mention, namely, the classification of shells according to their animals. This has been attempted in the work of Cuvier, his “Règne Animal,” and the result of this endeavour, so far as it relates to the Anomia in particular, may in this place deserve our explicit observation. In this work (Règne Animal) Cuvier endeavouring to class the Anomiæ according to the animals known to inhabit them, as well as those which he imagines for the fossil tribes, so disperses them, that the Trochi, Turbines, Nautili, Volutæ, and indeed nearly the whole of the Univalves intervene between his two first genera of these bivalves, Hyalæa and Anomia; and the Anomia tridentata of Forskahl, which is the Hyalæa of this author, is placed with Clio (the shell of which is our Bulla Aperta[[26]]) among the Ptéropodes. After the long interval occasioned by this introduction of the Univalves we find Anomia,[[26]] and Placuna, two of his genera together, but with another tribe of beings, the animal inhabitants being of his class Acéphales; and after another wide interval in which the bivalve Mya,[[26]] the multivalve Pholas,[[26]] the univalve Teredo,[[26]] and the naked or shell-less Ascidia, occur we find in a distant class among another tribe of animals, Mollusques Brachopodes, the genus Terebratula. It is here ascribed to Bruguière, as in other works it is assigned to Lamarck. Such is the arrangement of this family in the Règne Animal of Cuvier, a form in which no cabinet, it must be acknowledged, could be arranged without embracing the most unprecedented anomalies; nor can we doubt that if the animals of the fossil Terebratulæ and Anomiæ were known, for in this arrangement they rest on presumption only, they must be further separated in such a system than they are at present, some being perforated at the beaks, others imperforate, and some having the aperture under the beaks, all which demonstrates a difference in the structure of the animal, to whose use they were adapted.
From this analysis of the generical distinctions of the different families of the Anomiæ we may now be permitted to return to the shell before us, the object of our more immediate consideration, and respecting which there appears to be no less misconception among late later writers than we have found already respecting the genera.