Bibliographical Notice. 477 



source' of his information, but it is clear* that he was ac- 

 quainted witli the fact that Po^aTnoJ/ws was preoccupied before 

 ]819, when Samouelle, basing himself on Leach's MSS., 

 proposed to apply that term to Astacus jluviatilis. 



To draw tlie conclusions that flow from these facts : — 



First, as a matter of accuracy in dates and names : on 

 p. 202 of Mr. Stebbing's work already referred to, ^^Nephrops, 

 Leach, 1819," should have the date corrected to 1814; 

 " Astacus, Leach, 1814," on the same page, should be altered 

 to — well, it is hard to say; Leach's Astacus of 1814 is the 

 Astacus of Gronovius (1764) as emended by Fabricius and 

 others, and by Leach's removal of A. norvegicas. " Pota- 

 mobia, Leach, 1819" (p. 207), should read Potamobius, 

 Samouelle, 1819 [preocc. by Leach]. 



Secondly, till the appearance of the second vol. of Milne- 

 Edwards's great work in 1837 zoologists at large were 

 content to accept as accurate the words of Desmarest in 

 ]823 t '• — '' dans i'etat actuel de la science, le genre Eorevisse 

 \^Astacus~\ se trouve renfermer des esp^ces d'eau douce et des 

 especes marines dont le nombre ne s'el^ve pas h. plus desix." 



A 11, then, that the most pious priority-purist could ask is that, 

 in the year 1896, some one should invent a name to replace 

 Samouelle's preoccupied term Potamobius, given by him in 

 1819 to the crayfish, and, as a reward for doing so, he 

 promises only that the inventor will tlirow into confusion not 

 only carcinological literature, but every text-book in every 

 language under the sun. 



1 have taken a great deal of trouble with this case, and I 

 have a suspicion that if a i'ew more would be equally 

 " eingehende " we might speedily give the purists the short 

 shrift 1 have often wished them. 



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE. 



Artistic and Scientific Taxidermy and Modelling. 

 By Montagu Browne, F.Gr.S. &c. London, 1896, 



Some years ago Mr. Browne published a very useful little work 

 called ' Practical Taxidermy,' and we have now before us a much 

 moie complete and carefully compiled work on the same topic, 

 which goes more fully into the subject. Mr. Browne enters in 

 some detail into the origin and process of the art from the earliest 

 ages unto the present time, from which we gather that, though the 

 Egyptians preserved various kinds of animals by embalming them, 

 yet the actual stuffing of specimens for museum purposes does not 

 date back more than about three hundred years : but even withiu 



* P. Z. S. 1878, p. 7-52. 

 + I'um. cit. p. t!07. 



Ann. t^ Mag. X. Hist. Ser. 6. Vol. xviii. 33 



