Let's try this again - someone must know why there are only a handful of mollucan publications for 30 years or so after Linneus invented the modern binomial system! Were there a lot of non-binomial publications that were subsequently discarded, or was it just so difficult to publish things, that only a few determined people actually did it - or was there just not that much interest in publishing taxonomic papers about molluscs during this period??

Origional question:

There may be a simple explanation, but it has always seemed odd to me that from Linneues' establishing of the modern binomial system in 1758, hardly any molluscs appear to have been described before Hwass in 1792, except for Chemnitz and Muller, and Linne himself: during this 34 year period, it seems that one can count the number of Molluscan taxonomy papers on the fingers of one or two hands - why???? Virtually everything was in need of a binomial name then, and explorers must have been dragging new species back to Europe at a brisk pace - so why were so few eager scientists, amateur or otherwise, involved in describing new species? Is this also the case in other phyla??