Paul,
It is maybe a little off topic to the thread but I enjoyed very much your history observation of Perry being derided by the established men of science.
John
Hexaplex is one of the genera created by an interesting figure, George Perry, in his "Conchology" of 1812. Perry was a stonemason by trade, and his work was loudly derided by the "gentlemen" of science, snobs to a man. Well, George got the last laugh, as many
of his genera (Hexaplex, Triplex, Monoplex etc.) survive today.
However, just because he called a genus "Hexaplex" does not mean that all its members must always have six varices. Genus and family names can describe shell features, but not necessarily those of all their members. A good example is the family Planorbidae,
based on the genus Planorbis, which means "flat spiral." Many planorbids are just that - the famous disk-shaped "Ramshorn Snails" - but in the same family we also find the genus Camptoceras, which looks like an elongated twist of paper - about as unplanorbid
as you could imagine.
George evidently intended his genus names to indicate shells with one, three and six varices, but over the years many others have been added to them that don't conform to that idea. You can't change an available name to make it more accurate, however, as anyone
with a Cassis madagascariensis knows.
Paul Callomon
Collection Manager, Malacology and General Invertebrates
Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University
1900 Benjamin Franklin Parkway, Philadelphia PA
19103-1195, USA
[log in to unmask] Tel 215-405-5096 - Fax 215-299-1170
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