390 E. Billings on Prof. HalVs recent publication. 



sheets having been obtained from the printing-office, many months in ad- 

 vance of publication : and I wish simply to record the fact in this place. I 

 had supposed that authors considered such proceedings disreputable, and 

 I scarcely believe that there can be a difference of opinion among gen- 

 tlemen in regard to acts of this kind. [See Canadian Journal of Indus- 

 try and Science, N. S. No. 34, p. 355 ; and Canadian Naturalist and 

 Geologist, Vol vi. No. 4, p. 317.] 



The two articles, in the "Canadian Naturalist" and "Canadian 

 Journal," referred to at the end of the above quotation were 

 written by me and published under my name ; and it would 

 appear therefore that Professor Hall is desirous of having it 

 understood that I procured the proof sheets of some of his works 

 before publication. In answer to this charge, so unfairly made, 

 I shall only say that I never procured either directly or in- 

 directly a vestige of the proof sheets of any of his works 

 either before or after publication, with one exception, and this 

 by no fault of mine. The circumstances are as follows, and 

 they are well known to him. In Silliman's Journal for July, 

 1859, p. 149, 1 saw a notice of a pamphlet of 18 pages, published 

 by Prof. Hall. This was the portion of the Twelfth Annual Report 

 referred to by him in the above quotation and which he says 

 was printed in January and February, and published " immediately 

 thereafter." As the criticism in that Journal pointed out that 

 Prof. Hall had described one of my genera under a new name, I na- 

 turally felt desirous of seeing the work. No copy had been sent 

 to our survey, although according to his own showing it had been 

 published five months. I wrote to a friend in Albany to procure 

 one for me. I did not ask for the proof sheets but for the work 

 itself. My friend could not get a copy but sent me several loose 

 leaves, some of which were evidently proof sheets, as they were 

 printed only on one side and had some corrections in the margin. 

 There were 25 pages and 17 of these bad been published as 

 above stated some months previously. The other 8 pages con- 

 tain the genera iVwc^eospVa, dated by him 185Y ; Trematospiray 

 ISSY ; Rhynchospira^ 185*7, Tropidoleptus^ 1856, and part of 

 Leptocoelia 1856.* Now, when an author places dates after the 



* It is of great importance that the dates of genera and species 

 should be correctly given at first. Many of Prof. Hall's are either er- 

 roneous or ambiguous, I do not admit that those here cited are the true 

 dates. 



