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xviii 
may be no less desirable to direct attention. Dr. Puton, in 
noticing some of these anomalies on a recent occasion (Petites 
Nouv., 120, 121), adverts to a principle which has been advocated, 
that all are bound to make use of reason and good sense in these 
and other matters; but Mr. Arnold Lewis emphatically objects 
to the exercise of such discretionary authority ad libitum as a 
reliable precept, which must inevitably leave the door open to 
every possible latitude of interpretation according to the views of 
particular individuals, thereby leading to perpetual inconsis- 
tencies and interminable disagreement; although the evil is 
comparatively a minor one to that of the elasticity of the present 
law of priority, for which, as he contends, nothing but a new 
enactment can adequately provide, by conferring the right to 
retain the names in use. 
It must be acknowledged that Mr. Arnold Lewis has done 
good service in setting forth some of the preposterous results of 
the present system, and in recording the opinions of many emi- 
nent authorities in reference thereto ; but he touches very lightly 
upon the means whereby such authoritative restrictions should 
be determined, which, to be effectual, should be accepted as 
equally binding upon all. General acquiescence, however, will, 
he conceives, be readily attainable, as governed by considerations 
of expediency, and by aconsciousness of the “real boon” which 
such a measure would confer. 
A curious illustration of the value of presumed dates under 
the priority law is afforded by the anachronism which appears 
in the recently published ‘ Statistique’ of the Macro-Lepidoptera 
of ‘ Kure et Loire,’ by our honorary member, M. Achille Guenée, 
whose volume, issued in 1875, has a title-page of the year 1867, 
with a preface of 1866! In this work, M. Guenée discards 
synonymy altogether; his principle being, as he states, to give 
to each species the most ancient and best-known author’s name, 
and that which he conceives should be definitively adopted. 
Fossm Enromonoey. 
Mr. Henry Woodward, F.R.S., has read a paper before the 
Geological Society, wherein he describes two new fossil species 
of Macrurous Crustacea belonging to the genera Callianassa and 
Mecocheirus, the former obtained from the Kimmeridge clay of 
