1896. NOTES AND COMMENTS. 3oi> 



Mr. Cockerell asks for our criticism ; he shall have it. And our 

 remarks will be found applicable to many similar publications. We 

 accept Mr. Cockerell at his own valuation, and say nothing as to the 

 intelligibility or validity of his diagnoses. But, by the way, what is- 

 the difference between a diagnosis and a "/»// diagnosis " ; in other 

 words, how can one abstract a diagnosis ? A diagnosis is, or should 

 be, itself an abstract as condensed as is consistent with intelHgibility. 

 More than this cannot be diagnostic ; and nothing that is diagnostic 

 should be omitted even from a preHminary notice. However, this- 

 may pass as due to an incorrect use of language. The real question 

 is as to the necessity for this little paper of Mr. Cockerell's. It is, he- 

 says, to obviate the difficulties arising from scattered publication.. 

 But there is no necessity, we presume, laid on this author to shower 

 his coccids broadcast like carnival confetti. The desire for notoriety 

 that leads some authors to publish ten papers where one would do,. 

 and to send them to all parts of the world for publication, is in itself 

 reprehensible, but doubly so if it leads to the additional publication* 

 of one or more preliminary notices. We do not grasp the plea — 

 " the convenience of students " ; students ourselves, we are 

 incessantly irritated, either by turning up preliminary notices that 

 are devoid of detail and illustration, and without reference to the- 

 place where such may be found, or else, when we have relied for 

 name and date on an illustrated and detailed account, by suddenly 

 finding our synonymic tables upset owing to some obscure preliminary 

 note that is not referred to in the completed paper. 



We do not know whether Mr. Cockerell intends to give proper 

 references to this little paper of his in the promised Bulletin, or 

 whether he intends to re-introduce his species as n. spp. But 

 instances of the latter form of annoyance are not rare : another 

 correspondent points out that a new genus and species of holothurians, 

 Pelagothiiria natatrix, was introduced by Professor Ludwig in 

 Zoologischev Anzeiger, xvi., p. 183, 1893, that a figure of it appeared in 

 Lang's " Lehrbuch der vergleichehden Anatomic," August, 1894, y^t 

 that it was again published in Ludwig's Holothurioidea of the 

 " Albatross," in October, 1894, ^^ nov. gen. et sp. ; he also complains that 

 Dr. Hartlaub published a large paper on the Comatulidae of the 

 Indian Archipelago, in which a number of species were described as 

 new, which turned out to have been described in a Vorlaufige 

 Mittheilung in the preceding year. If such be the treatment meted 

 to it by its own authors, the preliminary notice would appear deprived 

 of its last excuse, that of securing early or prior publication. No one 

 will seriously contend that, amid the increasing press of publication- 

 and multiplication of unnecessary writings, scientific men should be 

 encouraged in these vain repetitions and immature essays, whose- 

 chief use seems, after all, to be to enable their authors to receive 

 criticism on the mistakes to which their hurried preparation naturally 

 exposes them. 



