Nomenclature of Eehinoids. 121 



volantes. L'erreur commise sur l'habitat des individus figures 

 est ici d'autant plus e\idente que ni Van Phelsum, ni Ciamer 

 n'avaient recueillis ces individus eux-memes ; ils les tenaient 

 de navigateurs et peut-etre de seconde ou de troisieme main. 

 Chacun sait combien les erreurs de provenances sont faciles 

 dans de pareilles conditions/' Lambert must thus have 

 recourse to the contention that there must have been a con- 

 founding of the labels in the old collection of Cramer; this 

 sounds, indeed, very convincing ! What a pity that this 

 collection no longer exists (as Professor Sluiter has kindly 

 informed me) ; it would have been very interesting to see 

 whether there were any labels at all in it! Lambert can 

 give no proof whatever that the locality " Adriatic " is wrong. 

 To the other objection, that the unenlarged figures resemble 

 much better the flat form, Lambert only says : " Je ne suivrai 

 evidemment pas le savant professeur dans cette argumenta- 

 tion, ou une hypothese remplace la discussion"! I am not 

 going to discuss this further, as Lambert will evidently 

 not accept any reason on this point. But I do not fear 

 that anybody without preconceived ideas will join Lambert 

 in his view. I will merely quote, mutatis mutandis, from 

 Lambert himself the following passage (' Notes Echinolo- 

 giques/ i. p. 32, note) : — " Mais pourquoi de pareils boule- 

 versements sans utilite pratique? Pourquoi, contrairement 

 a une tradition (demi-) s^culaire faire d'une forme eMevee le 

 type d'un genre que tout le monde a compris autrement? 

 G'est la. du byzantinisme, bon a jeter la deconsideration sur 

 les sciences e'ehinologiques et nous ne cesserons de protester 

 contre de semblables propositions, qui violent en realitd les 

 regies sagement entendues, edict^es par les Congres, et ties 

 certainement celles autrement respectables de la logique et du 

 bon sens." 



As with Echinocyamus, so Lambert deals with a number of 

 old familiar names — Erissopsis, Schizaster, Spatangus, 

 Echinocardium, Strongylvcentrotus , Diadema ; they are either 

 used in quite a new sense or wholly rejected. As I think it 

 hopeless to try to convince Lambert of the absurdity of all 

 these changes, I shall not here enter into a discussion of 

 them *. 



In spite of the remarkably jnodest sentence concluding 

 Lambert and Thiery's 'Notes Echinologiques I.,' — "Ainsi, 

 quelles que soient les divergences d'e'coles, nous proposons de 

 mettre piatiquement tout le monde d'accord et cette seule 

 consequence est pour nous un criterium de l'excellence de nos 



* I have included some remarks on these names, excepting Strongylo- 

 centrotus and Diadema, in the ' fnpolf ' Echinoidea, ii. pp. 174-176. 



