MAR 1 1896 



NATURAL SCIENCE: 



A Monthly Review of Scientific Progress. 



No 48. Vol. VIII. FEBRUARY. 1896. 



NOTES AND COMMENTS. 



The' Preliminary Notice. 

 r FHERE is, we are gravely assured, much to be said for the Pre- 

 J- liminary Notice. This much is usually said by two classes of 

 people : first, the priority-hunter ; secondly, the type-hunter. The 

 priority-hunter is the man who is, as a rule, more concerned with 

 adding a new name to the literature of science — to which name his 

 own, as he fondly supposes, is to be attached for ever — than he is 

 with investigating the structure and relationships of the species which 

 he forces upon an unwilling world. He lives in a perpetual fear 

 lest some colleague shall anticipate his work, and finds it necessary 

 to rush his driblets of papers through the press, with but scant 

 attention to the soundness of their workmanship, and with little care 

 that they shall prove intelligible to his readers. The type-hunter is 

 usually a museum official. In common with the officials of other 

 museums, he one day receives some specimens from a distant country. 

 He imagines it to be his duty to the institution which he serves to 

 fly to the printing-office with a hastily-composed description of those 

 among them that he believes to be new species, in order that those 

 specimens may acquire the fictitious value of what are known as 

 " types." His business, like that of the priority-hunter, is not with 

 his scientific colleagues ; he cares little whether his description can 

 be understood either by his fellow-workers or by future generations, 

 for, to do him justice, he usually excuses his action on the ground 

 that a museum catalogue, or a Government report, or some other 

 ponderously moving publication, will eventually provide the world 

 with all the details for which it is anxious. Even if the monograph 

 never appears, it matters little to him ; the museum has the type, 

 and, in the absence of proper figures and description, this renders 

 it all the more necessary for students to visit his museum. Hence, 

 fame to the museum, and promotion to himself as an active official ! 

 But these two classes do not, we earnestly hope, represent either 

 a baser majority or an enlightened minority of scientific workers. 

 Rather, we venture to affirm, do they constitute a minority which we 



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