66 rKOCEEBIXGS OF THE 



Elireiihergian term Bryozoa." Wliat ainazinp; candour on the 

 part of an advocate for the use of one term, when he dedares that 

 fair arj^iiment is in favour of our usitip; the other. Here, too, it 

 should be remembered tliat Busk's action had to be judged by 

 itself at the time when it was taken. It could not rely on a long 

 list oi famous experts in IBoii. Allman and Hincks, Norman and 

 IlarnuT, llerdinan and Gardiner, JS'icholls and Thornely, Kirk- 

 l)atrick and Annandale, had not yet either written on tlie subject 

 or expressed any opinion on its proper title. 



Observe, further, that Busk's article in the ' Annals ' of 1852 

 is " On the Priority of the Term ' Polyzoa ' for the Ascidian 

 Polypes." As a very imperfectly informed amateur on this branch 

 of zoologv, I venture to ask the learned disciples of Busk whether 

 the animals which they call Polyzoa are Ascidians. They will in 

 their answer no doubt give aw-ay their tutelary genius. But Busk 

 himself would probably have paused in upholding what he 

 supposed to be Thompson's claim, had he been conscious of the 

 fact that, prior to the publication of Thompson's memoir, 11. P. 

 Lesson, in the 'Voyage de la Coquille ' (vol. ii. p. 437), had 

 already used Pohizoa in the singular number for a genus of 

 compound ascidians. He would probably have thought it quite 

 inexpedient to have a word, undistinguishable in sound and 

 spelling from that generic name, as appellation of a much higher 

 group. 



Here it is right to confess that Lesson's ' Manuel de I'histoire 

 des JNIollusques,' to which I referred in the Linuean circular for 

 2nd March, 1911, has not proved to be procurable either in 

 Prance or England. But the same Lesson in his ' Histoire 

 iiaturelle des Zoophytes,' p. 6G, 1843, declares that his con- 

 tribution to the zoology of ' La Coquille ' was "tire a part et mis 

 en commerce " in 1829. The priority, therefore, of Lesson's 

 Polyzoa over Thompson's caii scarcely be disputed. "Whether in 

 Zoology it is desirable, allowable, or in accordance with any good 

 ])recedent, that a name previously adopted for a genus should be 

 iudependently repeated as the name of a class or phylum, it would 

 he presumptuous in me to decide. Branchiopoda, I admit, has 

 been sometimes retained for an Entomostracan order, very likely 

 from ignorance of its earlier employment as a generic name by 

 Lamarck in 1801. 



But surely no rare exception, if any valid one can be found, 

 ou' ht to be followed in the present instance, for w hy should a 

 claim be asserted for Thompson w hich he never made for liimself ? 

 Some stress has been laid on the words which he uses in regard to 

 his Polyzoa (p. 92), that " this discovery must be the cause of 

 extensive alterations and dismemberments in the Class with which 

 they have hithei'to been associated." But in the very same 

 paragraph he inunediately proceeds, not to establish a new Class, 

 but simply to transfer all such species and genera as contain liis 

 " new animal " from the class Zoophytes to the class Mollusca 

 acepliala, adding, " I sliall merely indicate here in a general way 



