Published: 2015-08-05
Total Pages: 490
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Excerpt from Occasional Papers on Mollusks, Vol. 5: Published by the Department of Mollusks, Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts Addison Emery Verrill, first professor of zoology at Yale University, was one of the leading figures in the third era of American conchology, which William H. Dall called the Stimpsonian Period after William Stimpson (1832-1872). "This period can hardly be said to have been introduced by an epoch-making work, but gradually the old methods were discarded for the new. This meant adopting radical changes in classification and welcoming the theory of evolution with all the light it shed in dark places" (Dall, 1888:97). Stimpson was preparing a manual of the marine invertebrates from Maine to Georgia for the Smithsonian Institution based on the most extensive collection of eastern American invertebrates ever brought together, but it, along with the manuscript, was destroyed in the great Chicago fire of October 1871. Stimpson died the following year, only forty years old. It was Verrill who with the aid of his brother-in-law, Sidney Irving Smith, prepared a more geographically limited, but comprehensive manual, Report upon the Invertebrate Animals of Vineyard Sound and adjacent waters (1873). Verrill was to write extensively on the marine invertebrates of eastern North America based on subsequent collections made by the United States Fish Commission. Many of these works were exclusively on mollusks. Some, like those of Dall, were based on the spoils of Alexander Agassiz' expeditions on the government ships Blake and Albatross which Agassiz undertook at his own expense. When Dall wrote his paper, Some American Conchologists (1888), Stimpson, who was thirteen years his senior, was long dead "cut off early in his career showing more promise than accomplishment," but Dall could hardly have called the period after himself or Verrill, who were very much alive, and among its most accomplished members. Verrill was born on his father's farm on Furlong Mountain in Greenwood, Maine on February 9, 1839, and was named for a close friend of his parents, Nathan Addison Emery, who died from a fall shortly thereafter. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.