CORRESPONDENCE. 



Professor Milne-Edwards, M. Grandidier, and ^pyornis. 



I venture to think a protest ought to be raised by some British naturalist 

 against the tone of the note in this month's Natural Science on the recent French 

 discovery of Mpyornis bones. For many years there has been a generous rivalry, 

 fruitful of enterprise and hard work, between the French and ourselves in the matter 

 of Mascarene Zoological discovery. When, then, as in the case referred to in your 

 article, the French have succeeded in first making known to the world a set of new 

 and interesting fossils, it ill becomes a British Journal of the standing of Natural 

 Science to complain in so cavalier a manner of the exact method in which the 

 discovery is announced. 



Were the complaints correct in themselves there would still be little excuse for 

 such an attack, but as a matter of fact the only alleged fault of the authors which, 

 if true, would have caused difficulty to the real worker on specimens, as opposed to 

 the mere critic, practically does not exist at all in the paper referred to. Far from 

 its being the case that "names are applied to collections of limb-bones which may 

 or may not belong to the same species, and no particular bone is taken as the type 

 specimen," the species are distinguished mainly on size, and in four cases out of 

 seven one bone only, either tibia or tarso-metatarsus, has its dimensions fully and 

 exactly recorded, and is therefore clearly in each case the type of the species. Of 

 the other three cases, one was founded on these two bones together and the other 

 two on the two chief leg bones, which may have been found in conjunction, and are 

 in all cases most carefully measured. In a group where size is of the most vital and 

 diagnostic importance, to dismiss these measurements with the remark that " though 

 some measurements are published, we have sought in vain for any adequate 

 diagnosis " is surely rather disingenuous. 



Considering the fact that one of the authors attacked. Professor A. Milne- 

 Edwards, holds the highest position in the French zoological world, is a naturalist 

 of whom any nation might be proud, and one to whom many British zoologists, 

 especially those of our National Museum, have been again and again indebted for 

 assistance in various ways, while the other, Mons. Grandidier, simply as a private 

 person, has spent a fortune and a lifetime in furtherance of the scientific knowledge 

 of Madagascar, it would surely have been better had Natural Science recognised in 

 a somewhat different way the magnificent work done by the two eminent French- 

 men it now, not for the first time, so gratuitously attacks. 



Natural History Museum, O. T. 



March 5, 1894. 



[Mr. Thomas seems to believe that some personal animus has influenced our 

 remarks on the work done by MM. Milne-Edwards and Grandidier on the 

 iEpyornithidae. Let us at once assure him that none more than ourselves have 

 greater respect for the personality of these eminent Frenchmen. It is the principles, 

 not the men, that we attack ; and in reply to the second paragraph of Mr. Thomas's 

 letter we have to say : — That in three cases {^. mulleri, ingens, and betsilei) specific 

 names are given to a collection of bones, or more than one bone, and since it is not 

 definitely stated that they belong to the same skeleton, it must not be assumed that 

 they do. The inconvenience resulting from this mode of procedure is apparent ; 

 for in the case of ^. iitgens measurements are given of the femur, tibio-tarsus, and 



