General History of the Marine Polyzoa. 285 



XXXII. — Contributions towards a General History of the 

 Marine Polyzoa. By the Rev. Thomas Hincks, B.A., 

 F.R.S. 



[Concluded from ser. o, vol. xv. p. 257.] 

 [Plates VI. & VII.] 



XV. SOUTH-AFRICAN AND OTHER POLYZOA. 



The present paper concludes tlie first series of the " Contri- 

 butions " so far as the descriptive portion is concerned. A 

 second may follow after a time if it should be found that there 

 is a sufficient amount of interesting material on hand to make 

 it desirable. 



On referring to the first paper of the present series (which 

 dates as far back as July 1880) I find that the programme 

 proposed in it has only been partially realized. One impor- 

 tant element of it has been almost entirely omitted — the record 

 of the known species belonging to the various genera that 

 have come under notice. It was soon evident that this por- 

 tion of the plan would involve an expenditure of time and 

 labour for which I was not prepared, and it was therefore 

 abandoned *. 



Of course the description of new forms (or forms supposed 

 to be new) has occupied a large portion of the work. About 

 a hundred species, previously undescribed, have been fully 

 characterized and figured. 



It may be interesting to contrast the style of diagnosis 

 which is now generally adopted with that which satisfied the 

 older writers and which survives in Busk's earlier works. In 

 the latter brevity seems to have been the thing chiefly aimed 

 at ; two or three leading features were considered sufficient 

 for identification, and there was no attempt at anything like 

 a complete portraiture of the form. Tiie present method is 

 to make the diagnosis as full as possible (a very important 

 point in the case of such a tribe as the Polyzoa), not merely 

 to indicate two or three distinctive marks, but to present in 

 detail the zooecial and colonial characters. There can be 

 little doubt, I think, that this style of diagnosis is most in 



* The want -which I had hoped in .some measure to suppl}', tliough in 

 an imperfect and partial way, has been satisfactorily met in the valu- 

 able woi'k lately published by Miss E. C. Jelly, ' A Synonymic Catalogue 

 of the Recent Marine Bryozoa,' whicli contains a list of the nanjes of all 

 published .species, combined with a full .synonymy. 



Ann. tD Mag. N. Hist. Her. 6. Vol. vii. 20 



