320 NATURAL SCIENCE. Oct.. 1894. 



[We have much pleasure in printing this letter from the energetic secretaries 

 of the Museums' Association. This body does, as we have often pointed out, such 

 very valuable work, that we should greatly regret to injure it by any misstatements. 

 We do not, however, gather that any of our statements are seriously traversed. We 

 stated, correctly, that the time allotted to papers was five hours ; we are now in- 

 formed that seven hours were actually conceded, but this apparently includes the 

 time spent on the formal business of the Association, which we did not reckon. We 

 stated that " considerable complaint was heard at the way in which both papers and 

 discussion were burked " : we are now informed that all the papers in the pro- 

 gramme were submitted to the meeting ; this is quite true, but how many were 

 cut short ? how ofcen was really useful discussion checked? and were the complaints 

 we heard from numerous people present throughout the meeting entirely imaginary ? 

 We stated that "the insertion of a day's excursion between the two days of meeting 

 proved vexatious to those who could ill spare their time" ; we are informed that those 

 who had time to spare talked " shop " ; but no attempt is made to contest our state- 

 ment. We fully agree that inspection of museums is and was a valuable part of the 

 week's work ; but waterfalls are not museums. Our only object was to utter a timely 

 warning, so that the large amount of active and useful work hitherto accomplished 

 by this Association at each of its annual gatherings might not be diminished by any 

 misguided generosity. — Ed.] 



Dr. J. M. Clarke writes to us with reference to the review of Hall and Clarke's 

 " Handbook of the Brachiopoda," which appeared in our August number (p. 140), 

 saying that the edition which fell into the hands ofour reviewer "is purely incidental 

 and accessory to the regular one. The work is published as pages 134-300 of the 

 Eleventh Annual Report of the State Geologist, for the year 1891 (dated 1892, 

 published 1894), and contains 22 lithographic plates." These plates were not seen 

 by our reviewer. 



We have received the following note from Professor F. A. Lucas, of Washing- 

 ton : — I was glad to see a note on Mr. Lydekker's new cetacean in Natural 

 Science (August, p. 85). I have not the least doubt, from my acquaintance with 

 whales, that what Mr. Lydekker saw was a humpback (Megapteia) lying at the 

 surface and thrashing his fins about, which is a very characteristic trick of the 

 genus. 



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