206 DAVID BRYCE ON THE 



which appeared in this country during the long interval were 

 Pritchard's Natural History of the Animalcules, published in 

 1834, and the same author's History of the Infusoria, published 

 in 1842. These books were little more than compilations, the 

 latter especially being largely based upon Ehrenberg's magnum 

 opus of 1838, and I take it that the first distinctively English 

 work in this direction of the later school of microscopists provided 

 with instruments of the modern type was the short paper pub- 

 lished by Brightwell in 1848, and followed by papers in 1849 

 by Dalrymple and by Dobie, and in 1850 by Gosse. Since that 

 time the lamp of the English enthusiast in the study of Rotifera 

 has been kept continuously burning, largely owing to the en- 

 couragement afforded by the Royal Microscopical Society and 

 by the Quekett Microscopical Club since its foundation in 1865. 

 No very great progress, however, had been made, when Hudson 

 and Gosse published in 1886 their epoch-making monograph, 

 The Rotifer a or Wheel Animalcules, which, together with the 

 Supplement of 1889, brought into focus all that had been 

 ascertained with regard to these highly organised animals, and 

 provided workers at home and abroad with a new starting-point 

 for further researches and wider investigations. Although the 

 difficulties which had previously beset the English worker, who 

 had laboriously endeavoured to identify his captures from the 

 figures and descriptions given in the 4th Edition of Pritchard's 

 Infusoria (the best book available in the early "eighties"), were 

 not altogether dispersed by Hudson and Gosse's work, they 

 were very considerably lessened and the fascinating study of the 

 Rotifera received an impetus which can be measured not only 

 by the tremendous volume of later literature, but also by the 

 long and exceedingly useful lists of more recently described 

 species so carefully compiled by Rousselet, and published from 

 time to time in the Jouryial of the Boyal Microscopical Society. 



The species comprised in these lists total approximately nearly 

 one and a half times as many as had been included in Hudson 

 and Gosse's monograph, even after making liberal allowance for 

 insufficiently described and for twice- described animals. This 

 fact can only be considered as remarkable, when it is remembered 

 that these authors had furnished particulars of practically all 



