36o NATURAL SCIENCE. May. 1897. 



and unless they are swayed by monetary and selfish considerations, or are compelled 

 unnecessarily to undergo extra physical exertion at the same time, does not, as Mr. 

 Berthelot maintains, produce " an abdication of their individuality, a hindrance of 

 their normal development, or a loss of their curiosity and love of original 



reflection." 



P. Q. Keegan, 

 London, March 12, 1897. 



Anglo-Saxon versus Graeco-Latin. 



I HAVE been much pleased with the editorial " Notes and Comments " in which, 

 from time to time, you have rebuked the pedantry of certain writers on science, 

 although I have sometimes thought you fail to make allowance for the hard fate 

 which drives them to endless search for new technical words, even when these 

 seem needless and shocking to the mere literary man. 



I know I shall have your sympathy if I tell of my own humiliation. This is 

 the cause of my grief. I had written that the heart of the grasshopper is under 

 the middle line of its back : and a compiler of books has, by his emendations, given 

 me to understand that scientific precision demands that I should have drawn on 

 the resources of dog-Latin and bastard Greek, and said : " The pseud-haemal 

 vessel is pseudo-ventral to the pseudo-dorsi-meson." I have taken the correction 

 for my own good, with chastened gratitude ; and I note with pleasure that while 

 you express your well-founded doubt of the existence in nature of anything to give 

 the name to, you nevertheless hold fast to the good old Saxon name "Telegony" 

 (Natural Science, Feb., 1897, P- ^o)- 



Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Md., U.S.A. W. K. Brooks. 



W. G. Binney as a Malacologist. 



With reference to the Note in our January number, on Messrs. Pilsbry and 

 Vanatta's Revision of North American Slugs, Mr. T. D. A. Cockerell protests 

 against our statement : " Here for the first time the introduction of new species 

 is accompanied by descriptions and figures of the internal parts," &c. He complains 

 that we are ignoring the works of W. G. Binney. Binney's work was good so far 

 as it went — very good for a pioneer ; but our sentence continued — " in a manner 

 similar to that employed by such EngHsh and Continental malacologists as Simroth, 

 Lessona, et alii." Binney's descriptions and figures are, we maintain, jiot similar 

 to those of the writers we mentioned, or to those of Pilsbry and Vanatta. They are 

 in some cases far too short, and place too much reliance on external characters 

 and those of the lingual ribbon. 



NOTICE. 



To Contributors. — Commtmications for the June Number to be 

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The July Number (being the _first of Volume XI.) ^vill be published by 

 Messrs. J. M. Dent & Co., 67 St. James's Street, S.W., to ivhich 

 address the Editorial Offices will be transferred. 



To the Trade. — Natural Science is published on the 2^th of each 

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 the 20th. 



