the 'Mirror.'" As he explained the book: I wrote it in conjunction with Professor Thomas Wyatt, and Professor McMultrie... my name being put to the work, as best known and most likely to aid its circulation. I wrote the Preface and Introduction, and translated from Cuvier, the accounts of the animals, etc. All School-books are necessarily made in a similar way. A second edition appeared in 1840 with Poe's name on the title page, but the 1845 edition appeared without it. Wyatt's book, in turn, had taken much material from The Conchologist's Textbook by the British naturalist Thomas Brown without attribution. Brown's book had been published in Glasgow, Scotland in 1837. Brown had based his text on the previous work of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and Carl Linnaeus, noting on the title page that his book was "embracing the arrangements of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and Linnaeus". Poe had penciled in as the last sentence to the preface of his personal copy of the first edition an acknowledgment to Brown: "Also to Mr. T. Brown upon whose excelent [sic] book he has very largely drawn". However, this acknowledgement was not incorporated into the second edition. Significance The American paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould wrote that Poe made significant contributions to the text by his editing and, more importantly, by translating Cuvier's passages into English. John H. Lienhard contends that in simplifying a rather esoteric subject, Poe made significant contributions in popularizing science in the United States. References External links Introduction to The Conchologist's First Book at the E. A. Poe Society Online version of the 1839 first edition. Online version of the 1840 second edition Poe's Conchology (and accusations of plagiarism) Books by Edgar Allan Poe 1839 non-fiction books Conchological literature Books involved in plagiarism controversies