216 NATURAL SCIENCE. March, 1S9G 



was made, as he correctly states, in 1894. May I inform your reviewer that the very 

 same suggestion was made to me in 18S6, nearly ten years ago, by a distinguished 

 zoologist, who adduced all Mr. Pocock's reasons, together with one not mentioned 

 by Mr. Pocock ? I considered that suggestion at the time, i.e., when I was preparing 

 my monograph, and had all the facts before me, and rejected it as bringing no 

 benefit, and only adding unnecessarily to the nomenclature of the group. I read Mr. 

 Pocock's paper when it came out, and so far from finding that he added to our know- 

 ledge of the genus, it appeared to me that his own knowledge of the facts already 

 established was not up-to-date in at least one important particular. I was not, 

 therefore, inclined to attach much weight to his remarks ; at any rate they did not 

 appear to me to have that importance which would justify reference to them in a 

 work of the scope of the " Natural History." 



As to the other point referred to by your reviewer, I may say, in justice to my 

 editors, that the "Cambridge Natural History" is not a monograph, and is not 

 intended to give a complete list of species or even of genera. My synopsis was 

 reprinted to give an idea in a small compass of the principal forms and localities of 

 the genus. I might, of course, have left out all but the best known forms, but I 

 wanted to create an interest in the genus in the various places in which it is found. 

 It was, as your reviewer points out, misleading on my part to call this list a 

 synopsis, and I greatly regret having allowed such an oversight to pass. At the 

 same time, may I call attention to the fact that some new points have been tenta- 

 tively put forward in the " Natural History," in the so-called synopsis, which were 

 not in my monograph ? These points, it is true, require confirmation by extended 

 observations, but if established they will have considerable interest and some 

 importance. It is odd that they should have escaped the notice of a critic of the 

 minuteness of your reviewer. — Yours faithfully, 

 Zoological Laboratory, Adam Sedgwick. 



New Museums, Cambridge. 

 February 10, 1896. 



My best thanks are due to Mr. Sedgwick for his courtesy in pointing out the 

 error of my statement, that his " synopsis " in the " Cambridge Natural History " had 

 been exactly reprinted from the monograph of 1888. There are indeed a few- 

 additions, which I must confess I overlooked; for I naturally thought that Mr. 

 Sedgwick would have corrected his list before he added to it. It is of interest to 

 know that a " distinguished zoologist " privately suggested the division of Peripatus 

 into three genera ten years ago. It is the more remarkable that, with this fact in his 

 memory, Mr. Sedgwick should have deliberately omitted all reference to the 

 published conclusions of Mr. Pocock, who has done so much good systematic 

 work on the animals most nearly related to Peripatus. Mr. Sedgwick's reasons for 

 disagreeing with two naturalists of some eminence would be of general interest. 



Science and Art Museum, Geo. H. Carpenter. 



Dublin. 



[The additions of "interest and importance" to Mr. Sedgwick's Synopsis are : 

 the erection of variability of colour into a character of the genera that he diagnoses 

 but refuses to accept ; two statements concerning constancy in number of legs, which 

 statements are mutually contradictory ; a reference to Miss Pollard's paper, while 

 still ignoring the name she proposed ; two notes of interrogation, and a mis-spelling. 



[Letters from Mr. Conway Macmillan, Mr. P. S. Buckman and Mr. T. T. Groom 

 are unavoidably held over. — Ed. Nat. Sci.] 



