Testacea Britannica or Natural History of British Shells, Marine, Land, and Fresh-Water, including the most minute: systematically arranged and embellished with figures... [ 3 vols, including Supplement].

Bookseller Notes

Though George Montague, British Army officer and amateur naturalist, is most well-known for his contribution to the study of British birds, notably his Ornithological Dictionary of 1802, this work, published only a year later, marks a significant advance in the field of British shells, describing 470 species of molluscs, 100 of which were new to the British record. Montagu's sea snail was named in his honour, and his shell collection is housed in Exeter's Royal Albert Museum and the Natural History Museum in London. Montague left his first wife, the daughter of the Earl of Bute, for Elizabeth Dorville, illustrator and engraver, with whom he had four children. The pencil annotations generally describe observations eg. 'The animals of P. Dactylus, Candidus and Parvus are luminous in the dark when living' (vol 1, p.20), one notably recounting an episode where '...an elegant shell supposed to be a nautulus was found in the [rubbed away] Island sand by by C.P. and given to G. Montagu, miniscule... it is transparent and strongly ribbed...' (vol 1, p.199).[with:] small sheet (loose) written on both sides in contemporary hand, (verso written in two directions), listing, in Latin, predominantly marine species - sea worms, sea snails, bivavles etc. - land snails and one bird, Hoopoe Prima Musicale. Two names are bracketed together with the words 'in Box no 13', which suggests that this is a list of specimens, and further, given the pencil annotation in volume one referring to an encounter with the author and the nature of the specimens listed, that this may be a contemporary record of part of the collection of Montagu himself.