CORRESPONDENCE. 49 



"When we Lave to represent an active, elastic, ever-changing 

 creature from different points of view, I cannot think it well to 

 treat it as a petrifaction, and draw it in precisely the same attitude 

 in each view. It generally happens that a variation in the position 

 brings into sight some organ or characteristic featui-e of the animal, 

 and these surely should not be sacrificed in order that rigid rules 

 may find easy application by beginners. 



As Mr. Cubitt has put on a high power, his finest illumination and 

 aplanatic searcher to view the supposed mote in my eye, allow me 

 gratefully to note — without any magnifying — the rather obvious beams 

 in his own. His Fig. 9, Plate LXXXIII., is called by him the "dorsal 

 view " of Melicerta ; it is really the ventral aspect.* Nor is this 

 blunder a mere slip of the pen, for it is repeated, and with an imagi- 

 nary " dorsal lobe " applied to every rotifer he speaks of, causing a 

 confusion impossible to be worse confounded. He may — probably 

 does — mean the ciliated prominence in the ventral aspect as his 

 " dorsal lobe " ; but fancy a describer of the elephant giving the trunk 

 as an appendage of the back ! Again, in an attempted partial classi- 

 fication, Mr. Cubitt calls Lacinularia a " free " form ; it is no more or 

 less free than is Melicerta (called " fixed "), it has its little fling in 

 very early life, then takes a weed, and settles down quietly while yet 

 a youth, like all its builder kindred (except Conochilus). Nor, by 

 any stretch of imagination, can Cephalosiphon be recognized as a 

 Philodine. Had Mr. Cubitt ever seen the former it would have been 

 impossible for him to group them together. 



Fain would I follow this gentleman in his more ambitious writings 

 concerning rotiferous nerves, brains, osmosis, and sundry laws of 

 physiology, but he occupiies most boldly the ground on which, with 

 angelic timidity, I " fear to tread." 



I remain, dear Sir, yours faithfully, 



H. Davis. 



Coal Plants. 



To the Editor of the ' Monthly Microscopical Journal.^ 



Goats Shaw, Oldham. 



Dear Sir, — It will be remembered by some of the readers of this 

 Journal that Professor Williamson read a memoir some time ago, 

 before the Manchester Philosophical Society, on a new fossil fruit 

 found by me in one of the lower coal-seams of the Lancashire Coal- 

 field : this fruit he described as belonging to his new plant called 

 Calamo'pehis. 



Since then he has read another memoir before the above Society 

 on another but very different fossil fruit found by me in the same 

 coal-seam. I believe this memoir is now in the press. 



I have been very fortunate in finding another coal fruit, very dif- 



* See Gosse in ' Phil. Trans.,' Pritchard, and elsewhere. 



E 2 



