Taxonomy books

Monographs on Joseph Charles Hippolyte Crosse (1826-1898), director of the ‘Journal de Conchyliologie’.

During the past years a project has been done on the legacy of Joseph Charles Hippolyte Crosse, based on the so-called ‘Crosse archive’ with correspondence preserved during his years as managing director of the ‘Journal de Conchyliologie’. This project has resulted in the publication of three volumes. The Frenchman Joseph Charles Hippolyte Crosse was educated as a lawyer but dedicated his whole life to malacology. He joined the editorial board of the Journal de Conchyliologie in 1861, and was managing director of the journal until his death in 1898. He was thus one of the spiders in the web of late 19th century malacology and had a core position to make a great contribution to this discipline. We have reconstructed his legacy with the help of archival sources and found his type material in the historical collections of several museums.

This series of monographs is published thanks to financial support from the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences. The electronic version (PDF) is available for free and can be downloaded below. After the download you can open the file with a specific password for each volume (see below). A print-on-demand (P.O.D.) hardcover version is also available (see links below.

Pierre Marie Arthur Morelet (1809-1892) and his contributions to malacology.

Pierre Marie Arthur Morelet (1809-1892) was an amateur scientist who devoted himself to both malacology and botany. He organised several expeditions, of which those to Cuba and Central America (1846-1848) and the Azores (1857) are especially noteworthy. His contributions to malacology were thus significant and we have reconstructed his legacy with a survey of archival sources and his type material in the historical collections of several museums. The resulting monograph is made up of two parts. In the first part we present a bibliography, some remarks on the whereabouts of his collection, and more than 200 recovered letters to contemporary malacologists, such as, Crosse, Fischer, Baudon and Dautzenberg.
His contact network has been reconstructed using data from his correspondence and his publications. This part offers an unique view into the world of malacology in the second half of the nineteenth century. In the second part a bibliography of Morelet is presented, as well as all his newly introduced taxa, with detailed documentation and figures of the species. More than 80 percent of his type material has been re-found and original figures, if they exist, have been reproduced for the remaining species. Of the taxa represented by actual shell material, more than 150 are now figured for the first time. The book has indices for both taxonomy and persons mentioned, and is a must-have for anyone interested in non-marine taxonomy and the history of malacology.