Prof. .Milne-Edwards^s lieply to I*f6f. Sedgwick. 473 



stinction here alluded to is however of no importance, for in no 

 instance does Prof. M'Coy mention having borrowed either from 

 our papers in the ' Coniptes Rendus/ or in any other publication, 

 what we claim as being our scientific property in his system of 

 classification. 



Prof. JVPCoy does not attempt to refute our claims, but in 

 order to account for not having informed his readers to whom 

 the classification presented in his work essentially belongs, he 

 now says that in his opinion there is no need for referring to the 

 authors of zoological groups that are larger or less definite than 

 the small divisions to which the name of a genus is now given. 

 In a descriptive catalogue of species, that might be admitted ; but 

 in a work that professes to be a systematic arrangement, and that 

 contains the characters as well as the designation of the various 

 zoological divisions, I should think it incumbent on the author 

 to mention the principal source from which he -has derived the 

 knowledge of those divisions. 



The explanation given by Prof. M*^Coy does not therefore 

 change the opinion which I had formed on the subject now 

 under discussion, and does not in the slightest degree invalidate 

 the statement criticised by Prof. Sedgwick. 



§ 3. In a letter from Prof. M^Coy, published by Prof. Sedg- 

 wick, the former gentleman says, " I may add that MM. Edwards 

 and Ilaime have figured and described, as new, in their * Mono- 

 graphic,' several corals previously published by myself in the 

 * Annals of Natural History,' and that the first idle time I have, 

 I shall write a paper on this and other scientific unfairnesses in 

 their works, with which at present we have nothing to do.'' 



The first part of this paragraph is correct. When the de- 

 scriptive part of the above work was printed*, M^e had not 

 yet seen the Number of the 'Annals and Magazine' published 

 in December 1850, and containing the description of some new 

 Palccozoic fossils by Prof. j\]'Coy ; but before receiving the above 

 lines we had done him full justice in that respect, for in the 

 Fifth Fasciculus of our work on British Fossil Corals, the ma- 

 nuscript of which is in the hands of the Palseontographical Society, 



* Almost all the text of our ' Monographic des Polypiers Palseoz.' was 

 printed in 1850, or in January 1851, previously to my departure for Italy, 

 where, on account of the bad state of ray health, I passed several months 

 in the bej^inning of 1851 (April to July). Some copies for private distri- 

 bution had even been given to a few friends ; but in consequence of the 

 circumstance here alluded to, and the time taken up by the preparation 

 and printing of the tables during my absence, the last Fascicidus contain- 

 ing the descri])tion of the above-mentioned species did not appear till June 

 following. This explains how it happened that Prof. M'Coy's paper, pub- 

 hshcd in December 1850, was not known to us early enough to be quoted 

 in that work. 



