366 NATURAL SCIENCE [December 



in its bisected shell ; Henry Woodward's restoration of Pterygotus 

 anglicus. We think it right to remark specially on this feature, 

 because it is an instance of a habit far too common with writers of 

 text-books. Let us look at a few other recent cases. Professor 

 W. B. Scott, in his " Introduction to Geology," favourably noticed 

 by us last April, has copied Dr Traquair's first (1888) restoration 

 of Ptcrichthys from Bashford Dean's " Fishes, Recent and Fossil," 

 and has marked it "From Dean after Smith Woodward." The 

 same legend is attached to Dean's own faulty attempt at a restora- 

 tion of Diptcrus, and we can only hope" that Smith Woodward feels 

 complimented. Parker & Haswell's " Text-book of Zoology " teems 

 with similar errors. Ray Lankester's figures of the head shield of 

 Ccphalaspis and Traquair's restorations of Ptcrichthys are marked 

 " From the Brit. Mus. Cat. of Fossil Fishes," although the writer of 

 that Catalogue was careful in both cases to acknowledge the author- 

 ship of the figures. Similarly Traquair's restorations of Palaeoniscns 

 macropomus and Platysomus striatus are marked " From Nicholson 

 and Lydekker," in spite of those authors having expressly noted the 

 figures as " after Traquair." So, too, a restored outline of the bones 

 of the shoulder-girdle of Plcsiosaurus is said to be " after Zittel," 

 who all in vain had taken care to state that it was " nach Owen." 

 Then comes Mr Beddard with his book on birds, reviewed by us 

 this month, and assigns to Andrews the authorship of Ameghino's 

 figures of the skull and pelvis of PJwrorhacos inflatus, simply 

 because Andrews copied those figures (with due acknowledgment) 

 in his paper in The Ibis. Examples crowd to our hand, especially 

 in books by lesser writers, but we have only room for one more 

 scapegoat. Last year Professor A. Issel published a " Compendio 

 di Geologia." In this Huxley's old (1862) restoration of Holopty- 

 chius is attributed to " Traquair," while Pander's ancient restoration 

 of Asterolepis ornata is marked " Pterichthys (Traquair)." As this 

 was published by Pander in 1858, we should imagine that Dr 

 Traquair was then a schoolboy. 



Now is not this a parlous state of affairs, evincing what the 

 costermonger described as " a very careless handling of the truth " 

 by a class of men whose studies are supposed to lead them to a 

 special reverence for truth and accuracy ? To depict an elaborate 

 dissection or to construct a restored figure of an extinct animal, is 

 just as much an embodiment of the results of original research as 

 pages of written description. The attribution of such figures to the 

 last text-book writer that has happened to copy them is an act of 

 scandalous injustice to those to whose patient research the said 

 figures are due. The purchase of cliches or of permission to photo- 

 graph woodcuts is a purely commercial affair, and it matters not at 

 all from whose work a restoration was last copied. In any case, if 



