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PREFACE. 
Ix writing the following pages, I have lahonred to produce 
such a “ History of the British Sea-Anemones and Corals,” as a 
student can work with. Having often painfully felt in studying 
works similar to the present, the evil of the vagueness and con- 
fusion that too frequently mark the descriptive portions, I have 
endeavoured to draw up the characters of the animals which I 
describe, with distinctive precision, and with order. It is said of 
Montagu that, in describing animals, he constantly wrote as if he 
had expected that the next day would bring to light some new 
species closely resembling the one before him ; and therefore his 
diagnosis can rarely be amended. Some writers mistake for 
precision an excessive minuteness, which only distracts the 
student, and is after all but the portrait of an individual. Others 
describe so loosely that half of the characters would serve as well 
for half-a-dozen other species. I have sought to avoid both 
errors : to make the diagnoses as brief as possible, and yet clear, 
by seizing on such characters, in each case, as are truly distinc- 
tive and discriminative. Further to aid the student, I have 
given the characters in a regular and definite order, so that he 
may at a glance compare species with species, or genus wdth 
genus, in their several parts and organs. 
In this I have received little aid — I may say almost literally 
none — from my predecessors. The “ History of British Zoophytes ” 
