194 THE AMERICAN MONTHLY [June 



Mr. Waller is wiser but mig-ht perhaps still better have 

 omitted all allusion to the facts. In another place he shows 

 g-ood ideas of nomenclature by asking- whether the names 

 Leidyi, Millsii, Muleri, Baileyi, Capewelli, Ramsayi, Ever- 

 etti, g-ive anymore information than letters or numerals. 

 We far prefer the numerals. 



The quotation is as follows: 



"When Professor Hitchcock, of the United States, was 

 over here a few years ag-o I g"ave him a specimen of the 

 Ditchleys spong-illa for his collection, and others also dis- 

 tributed by or throug-h me found their way to America, and 

 I sent a slide to Mr. Carter. After some time had elapsed 

 I heard that Mr. B. W. Thomas, an earnest worker of 

 Chicag-o, had found the same variety in the river Calumet, 

 and seeing- its identity with that of Ditchleys, and finding- 

 that, in my description, I had declined specially naming- it, 

 he proposed to call it Meyenia calumetica. Then Mr. 

 Carter, who had received a specimen from Mr. Thomas, 

 saw that it was identical with that he had received from me 

 turned his attention to the subject, and in an elaborate arti- 

 cle in "Ann. and Mag. of Natural History" g-ave it the 

 name of Meyenia angustibirotulata, which title Mr. Ed- 

 ward Potts, in his admirable "Monograph on the Fresh- 

 water Spong-es of America," has accepted. Mr. Thomas 

 then feels annoyed that he should thus be superseded, as 

 Mr. Carter had, in the first instance, declared ag-ainst its 

 being- a variety. 



For myself, who first discovered it 19 years ago, and 

 mig-ht have claimed some voice in the matter, I could not 

 be otherwise than amused at the little quarrel among-st 

 my friends, I having decided against g-iving the variation 

 any separate name, my views leading- me in another direc- 

 tion. 



One satisfaction I have, however, g-ained in the knowl- 

 edg-e that the Spong-illa of the riverCalumet is also found 

 g-rowing- upon the stem of aquatic plants, as it tends to 

 establish, what one would naturally feel, that similar con- 

 ditions produce similar results." 



