22 



or imaginary gaps by a number of unproved assertions and unwarranted hypotheses regarding 

 structure, biology and classitication. 



Nowadays many authors have a remarkable weakness for publishing innumerable 

 immature notes, for building zoological card-houses, drawing up genealogical trees and 

 in^'enting theories and hypotheses, especially where they know very little. Where they have 

 ac<iuired considerable knowledge based on thorough study of a large mateiial, as a rule, 

 they abstain more from hazardous conjectures. One result indeed has been obtained: Zoo- 

 logy has been encumbered with endless preliminary notes, with papers abounding in faulty 

 and defective representations and unaccountable postulates and reflections, so as to render 

 the study of it troublesome to an almost unsurraountable degree. 



Jules Bonnikr: Mesultats scienlifiqites de la Campagne du yCaudan' dans le 

 GoJfe de Gascogne, Aoitt-Sepfemhre 1895. ildriophthalmes. (Ann. de rUniversit6 de Lyon, 

 1896)^). In an appendix to this valuable work the author describes and figures a new 

 species, Spharonella sedentaria Bonn., which he has discovered in the branchial cavity of 

 Cydaspis longkatidata G. 0. Sars of the order Cumacea, in a depth of 9t)0 metres, lat. 

 44° 5'N., long. 4" 45' E. He found an adult female, four ovisacs and a small specimen, 

 w^hich he considers to be a young female, but wliich is no doubt a male. The species 

 belongs to my new genus Homoeoscelis, and comes very close to my IT. minuta. He begins 

 by describing the small specimen, and his description of its body, the borders of its head, 

 its antennulse, maxillipeds, trunk-legs and caudal stylets is essentially correct. He also 

 corrects Salensky's erroneous conception of the caudal stylets as a third pair of legs, but 

 he has certainly overlooked the maxillulae (comp. my drawings of the males of my species: 

 pi. II, fig. li— Ik and pi. XIII, fig. If— Ig), which are never wanting in any species ol 

 the whole family — unless the outer part of the mandibles possibly may be the larger part 

 of the maxillulie, wliich might indeed be supposed from the drawing. The hairs surrounding 

 the membranous border of the mouth are overlooked, and the basal joint of the maxills wliich 

 he mentions (his »maxiilipede interne«) does not exist; what he takes for this joint is no 

 doubt a part of the sub-median skeleton. As will appear from my subsequent description, 

 the only feature by which the male and a young female of the same size of the genus 

 Homoeoscelis can in all cases be distinguished from each other, is the distinctness of the 

 genital apertures in the female. The author has found no such apertures, and this circum- 

 stance, as well as the occurrence of the animal together with an adult female, indicates 

 that it must have been a male. The author's comparison of the female with the small 

 specimen is correct; only his description of the genital area calls for a few remarks. He 



') A special copy of this pajier, kindly sent me by the author, arrived on Febr. lllh 1897, .so that 

 the present remarks had to be written and inserted in my work when a large part of the fair copy of it 

 was already written. 



