HITNEAN SOCIETY OF LO>"DOX. 67 



the whole of the Flustracese, in many of which I have clearly 

 ascertained the animals to be Polyzote." 



Now, in regard to that last remark, without casting the 

 slightest imputation on Thompson's originality, one must again 

 appeal to Busk, who, publishing in 1859, says : " Thirty-one years 

 ago, Dr. Grant, in some ' Observations on the Structure and 

 Nature of Flustrse,' drew, for the first time, a distinction between 

 the animals inhabiting those growths, and the Sertularian, or 

 Hydroid Polypes, with which they had previously been associated." 

 These Observations by Dr. K. S. Grant appear in the Third 

 volume of the Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal (pp. 107, 

 337), which is dated 1827, so that he has two years precedence of 

 Thompson and three of Ehreuberg. A nice flusteration there will 

 be if we start a new school of writers calling the class Flustrie ! 

 And yet in the language of Busk, " It is scarcely likely that British 

 naturalists will refuse the honour justly due to Dr. R. S. Grant, 

 for what can scai'cely perhaps be regarded as a sufficient reason." 



Seriously speaking, in the face of Busk's admission that it was 

 Grant who, for the first time, drew the distinction, it can scarcely 

 be maintained that Thompson was the first to recognize the 

 Polyzoa as a distinct type of structure in the Animal Kingdom. 

 This is no denial of his statement that " the discovery of Polyzoa 

 was made in the summer of 1820." My own belief is that, had 

 he published in 1820, he would have made a new genus Polyzoa 

 for the Sertularia imbricata of Adams. But, as we all know, 

 recognition of our discoveries has to date, not from the time when 

 they were made, but from the time when they were published. 

 For aught we know, Grant also may have carried out Lis 

 observations ten years before he made them public. 



As an observer of nature Thompson was in the highest degree 

 keen and admirable ; in nomenclature he was almost equally 

 erratic and unmethodical. Witness his vacillating use of Shizo- 

 poda and Shizopodse f or the Schizopoda of Latreille, his unmeaning 

 name Nocticula for a luminous shrimp, his unjustified change of 

 that shrimp's specific name irom fuh/tns to banksii, his adoption of 

 Cynthia and Peilicellaria for new genera, though he was avowedly 

 aware that each had been previously used in a diiferent sense. 



That Polyzoa either in the singular or plural is not a term worth 

 contending for in respect of its appropriateness, should be felt 

 at least by members of that famous University which claims the 

 fine scholarship of Milton and Gray, of Porson and Munro, for the 

 Greek word ttoXv^iuos happens to mean long-lived, not many- 

 animaled, and even if it had the latter meaning it would be 

 undistinctive, being equally applicable to many species in quite 

 diti'erent groups. But some witchcraft must have put a spell upon 

 Thompson in respect of names. When he has to mention the 

 Cancer scorpioides of Montagu, he calls it scorplonurus. After his 

 death he leaves behind him a manuscript genus Scorpionura, once 

 more a preoccupied name. In place of this Spence Bate fouudeil 

 on the words Vaughau Thompson a new concoction. But the 



