PREFACE. 



In writing the following pages, I hare laboured to produce 

 such a "History of the British Sea-Anemones and Corals," as a 

 student can work with. Having often painfully felt in studying 

 works similar to the present, the evil of the vagueness and con- 

 fusion that too frequently mark the descriptive portions, I have 

 endeavoured to draw up the characters of the animals which I 

 describe, with distinctive precision, and with order. It is said of 

 Montagu that, in describing animals, he constantly wrote as if he 

 had expected that the next day would bring to light some new 

 species closely resembling the one before him ; and therefore his 

 diagnosis can rarely be amended. Some writers mistake for 

 precision an excessive minuteness, which only distracts the 

 student, and is after all but the portrait of an individual. Others 

 describe so loosely that half of the characters would serve as well 

 for half-a-dozen other sj)ecies. I have sought to avoid both 

 errors : to make the diagnoses as brief as possible, and yet clear, 

 by seizing on such characters, in each case, as are truly distinc- 

 tive and discriminative. Further to aid the student, I have 

 given the characters in a regular and definite order, so that he 

 may at a glance compare species with species, or genus with 

 genus, in their several parts and organs. 



In this I have received little aid — I may say almost literally 

 none — from my predecessors. The "History of British Zoophytes" 



