68 rnocEEDiNGS or the 



spell still works. Again there is vacillation. Again there is 

 controversy. To my mind it is clear that in 1858 Bate called his 

 genus yaun/7ionj;^souia, that in 1859 he changed it to A'aun/7io»i- 

 sonia, and finally in 18G0 decided for Vaun<o?H/>sonia. But 

 another orado maintains that the tomp was earlier than the thomjj. 

 We must wait and see. 



Xow all this slight skirmishing may easily and perhaps 

 jiistifiahly he dismissed with the remark, that the argument against 

 Polyzoa is advanced by one who has little or no intimate 

 acquaintance with the subject matter in which he is interfering. 

 But there is at least one writer, a Fellow of this Society, against 

 whom such a reproach cannot possibly be urged. It may well be 

 that some of us are ill acquainted with the arguments on this 

 topic powerfully stated by the veteran Bryo-zoologist, A. W. 

 Waters, so far back as 1880. But all those in the least interested 

 in the matter are hound to have taken into account his paper of 

 December IGth, 1909, published in our Journal so recently as the 

 22nd of June, 1910. Nevertheless, to refresh our memories, I 

 shall do myself the pleasure of quoting his two concluding 

 paragraphs. He writes : — " As a young man when I presented 

 papers, those in authority said, you should not use Bryozoa when 

 Busk and others use Polyzoa. I pointed out my reasons and 

 induced them to examine Thompson's paper, and they all, without 

 exception, said they considered 1 was quite right atid that there 

 could not be any question of Thompson using Polvzoa as a class 

 name. Such able literary and scientific critics as Mr. Dallas and 

 Dr. Francis became quite convinced, and Mr. Dallas in a review of 

 llincks's book put the question more clearly than it has been put 

 by anyone else. A number of members of the staff of the British 

 Museum working ui)on invertebrates met together to examine 

 Thompson's paper, and unanimously came to the conclusion that 

 Polyzoa was not given as a class designation. 



"Bryozoa was for a long time used in England, and then Busk 

 introduced Polyzoa as being Thompson's name. I was not 

 surprised that Busk, AUman, and llincks, who had worked 

 together, did not change, but I felt confident that the change would 

 soon be made by a younger generation. In this I seem to have 

 been mistaken ; and so long as any of our leaders use Polyzoa we 

 must recognise that there are two sides to the question, though 1 

 find it very difficult to understand how this can be iF we try to 

 divest ourselves of the knowledge gained since Thompson's time 

 and put ourselves in his position." (Journ. Linn. Soc, Zool. 

 vol. xxxi. p. 247.) 



You will not fail to notice the modesty of that conclusion. 

 It warns me not to alienate goodwill by being too self-assertive, 

 and to bring my treatment of the matter to an end, before you 

 become too sorry that it ever had a beginning. 



