reflecting on the University of Cambridge. 289 



expresses his regret at not having become acquainted with the 

 latter pubhcation early enough to be able to refer to it ; and we 

 feel much gratified in seeing that the results, which Professor 

 M'Coy appears therefore to have obtained solely from his own 

 observations, are often so very similar to those published by 

 ourselves a year before ; even by a singular coincidence he often 

 makes use of the same names for the divisions previously esta- 

 bhshed in the first part of this Monograph/' 



With regard to the first statement here made, I got the Cam- 

 bridge University bookseller to write to the French publisher for 

 the exact date at which he delivered the parts of the ' Archives ' 

 containing the French memoir in question (which bears no date, 

 and had been quoted in print by MM. Milne-Edwards and Haime 

 long before it was published) , and I received the authentic letter in 

 reply, fixing the real date of publication as the 26th of June 1851 ; 

 I did not of course receive it till July, our work being out the May 

 previous. In their second statement, that our Cambridge Fasci- 

 culus of May 1851 was " published at least a year after" the First 

 Part of their Palseontographical Memoir, they also err in a matter 

 of fact known to every Local Secretary of the Society throughout 

 the country ; and if they mean to deny that I only received it as 

 the sheets on which I wrote the note were passing through the 

 press, they again not only err in a matter of fact, but grievously 

 err in a matter of courtesy. Here I may add, that I received 

 the volume from the Cambridge Local Secretary on the day it 

 was sent down by the Society to him for the members. As for 

 the concluding part of their note, in which they try to make it 

 appear that I used their. writings while stating that 1 did not 

 know them, — I have already pointed out that, to serve this pur- 

 pose, they have suppressed the half of my note which stated that 

 / had profited by their previously published French writings ; 

 and those who examine the Cambridge work will find that in it 

 I have repeatedly referred to MM. Milne-Edwards and Haime, 

 and their French papers on Corals in the Annates des Sciences 

 and Comptes Rendus, of which their English work is little more 

 than a partial translation, and that there is no ground for their 

 insinuation, that either by a " singular coincidence " or other- 

 wise, their names or observations were passed for my own. 



In M. Milne-Edwards's letter to you he complains only of the 

 author's name not being put to the Orders, Classes, or Tribes, 

 so that his cannot be distinguished from mine or any other 

 writer's. I need only refer the members of the Palseontogra- 

 phical Society to their last volume (1852), where they will find 

 the same thing done by Prof. Forbes in his Monograph; also by 

 King (who gives his reasons) in a former volume, and by several 

 others ; and without wasting time with the reasons, I may say 



Ann. ^ Mag. N. Hist. Ser. 2. Fo/.xiii. 19 



