Bihlknj ra pliical Notice. 465 



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE. 



British Zoophytes : an Introduction to the Hytlroida, Actinozoa, and 

 Pohjzoa found in Great Britain, Ireland, ami the Channel Islands. 

 By Aethur S. Pennington, P.L.S., P.R.M.S. L. Keeve and Co., 



1885. 



Me. Pennington's book is mainly a compilation, and does not claim 

 to be anything more. His object has been to supply a manual, 

 moderate in size and therefore in price, which should meet the wants 

 of students up to a certain point and serve as an introduction to 

 more elaborate and costly works. The object is in itself highly 

 useful and commendable, and those who are interested in the diffu- 

 sion of scientific taste and knowledge will be quite prepared to 

 recognize its value. Such books are clearly required not only for 

 the student at a certain stage of his education, but also for the very 

 considerable and probably increasing class who, without professing 

 to take natural history an serieux, find in it a fascinating pastime. 

 But whilst we fully recognize the value of the work which Mr. 

 Pennington has set himself to accomplish, we feel that a question 

 may fairly be raised as to the conditions under which it is leo-iti- 

 mate to appropriate and reproduce the fruit of other men's labours. 

 We do not of course mean to imply that there are " vested rights " 

 in the contributions which the students of science make to the 

 common stock of knowledge. If there were no one would care to 

 enforce them. The aim of all true science is to win more truth for 

 humanity, and the sooner and the more widely it is diftused when 

 it is won the better. But it is one thing to assimilate the results of 

 scientific research and to body them forth with the stamp of our 

 own individuality upon them, and quite another to transfer them 

 without fresh minting and superscription from the pages of trheir 

 author to our own. Scientific truth, like all other truth, becomes 

 part of the common possession of mankind, and is free to all as the 

 air we breathe ; but the literary form in which it is first presented, 

 the dress in which the individuality of its discoverer has clothed it 

 the colourwhich it takes from his mental idiosyncrasy — these, it would 

 seem, must be personal property, and are to be respected as such. 



We venture to think that Mr. Pennington has transgressed 

 in this matter, and that his manual is too largely made up of 

 material simply borrowed from others, and not assimilated and 

 made his own by any special treatment. The ipsissiyna verba are 

 retained. It is not too much to say that almost the entire frame- 

 work of the manual is taken, wholly unaltered, from the works 

 of Allmau, Hincks, and Gosse. In the case of the Marine Polyzoa, 

 and to a large extent of the Hydroida also, the elaborate 

 diagnosis of the families and genera is copied from Mr. Hincks's 

 " Histories,"— not without acknowledgment, it is true, but, it 

 seems to us, without due regard for the claims of both the author 

 and publisher of these works. We do not wish to press the case 

 against Mr. Pennington; probably he has done nothing which has 



