Count Franc Hohenwart (1771-1844) who was the President of the Museum Curatorium donated to the Provincial Museum in Ljubljana in 1831 a vast collection of the sea shells of molluscs from all over the world. It included about 5000 specimens and is, next to Zois' collection of minerals, one of the basic collections of the Slovenian Museum of Natural History.

Mollusca are a large group of Invertebrates, including chitons, gastropods also known as snails, scaphopods or tusk shells, mussles and cephalopods. There are currently about 128000 species of mollusca in the world, of which some 105000 species of snails and approximately 20000 species of mussles.

The climate, temperature, sea currents, the depth of waters, salinity, soil structure, reproduction modes, and other elements all influence the expansion of mollusca. Individual related species live in different zoogeographical provinces. Hohenwart's collection includes shells of molluscs, mostly from the Indo-Pacific region.