Bibliographical Notices. 491 



practicable scheme in my paper in the ( Proceedings of the Zoolo- 

 gical Society' for 1868 (p. 118), entitled " Observations on Dr. 

 Gray's ' Notes on the arrangement of Sponges, with the descrip- 

 tion of some new Genera,' " I should not have taken any notice 

 of his paper had he not repeated himself for the second or third 

 time in endeavouring to enhance himself in his own and 

 others' esteem by very considerately deploring my shortcomings 

 in anatomy and physiology : — " as Dr. Bowerbank had no 

 preliminary study of anatomy, many of his ideas are most 

 crude and not consistent with physiological knowledge." It 

 is a well-known legal instruction to counsel, that " if you 

 find that you really have no case, then abuse plaintiff's at- 

 torney." A similar course seems to be that adopted by Dr. 

 Gray. It is very true that I did not attend the lectures at which 

 Dr. Gray attained his knowledge of anatomy and physiology in 

 his youth, and that I studied those sciences in my own way, 

 and that the results of our respective modes of attaining know- 

 ledge have led to very opposite conclusions, — Dr. Gray's to 

 his publishing (Gray's ' British Plants,' vol. i. p. 362) all the 

 British sponges then known as British plants, and to his 

 describing the siliceous spicula of Tethea pilosa as hairs ; 

 while my course of studies led me to the conclusion that 

 sponges were animals. 



Dr. Gray's mode of concocting a new arrangement of the 

 Spongiadse by means of the forms of their spicula is a very 

 facile one — far easier than examining more than a thousand 

 specimens to gain a knowledge of their various forms and their 

 positions in situ. Dr. Gray asked me to give him a copy of 

 my works on sponges, which I did with pleasure ; and he 

 then cut up the plates and arranged the figures according to 

 his own fancy, and in doing so he succeeded in making four 

 new genera and four new species out of the spicula of two 

 sponges, never having at that time seen a scrap or a spiculum 

 of either of them (see Proc. Zool. Soc. 1868, p. 129). This 

 mode of proceeding is quite after the old adage of " making 

 your hay with other people's grass." 



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTICES. 



Andrew Garrett's ' Fische der Sudsee,' beschrieben und redigirt von 

 Albert C. L. G. Gunther. Heft I. 4to. Hamburg: L. Friedrichsen 

 & Co., 1873. 



We are accustomed in this country to see merchants and others 

 en gaged in various departments of trade or in professions devoting 



