PEEFATOEY NOTE. 



^HE present issue is the first of a series of five or six similar parts 

 which will be devoted to an account of material collected during my 

 recent expedition to the Pacific in search of the eggs of the Pearly Nautilus. 

 The research was rendered possible by my appointment in 1894 to the 

 Balfour Studentship of the University of Cambridge and by substantial 

 grants from the Royal Society. Perhaps the character rather than the 

 quantity of the material which from first to last came into my hands 

 justifies this method of publication. The general collections which I made 

 have no claim to completeness since they were not part of my special 

 object ; but new facts relating to such forms as Nautilus, Peripatus, 

 Amphioxus, Ctenoplana, Balanoglossus, etc., cannot fail to possess a peculiar 

 interest. 



Some of these . facts have been already recorded in the pages of the 

 Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science, and it is proposed to incorporate 

 them anew in the present work. 



It is impossible to deny that the undertaking was an anxious and an 

 arduous one, and it is on that account that I am the more deeply 

 sensible of the interest manifested in, and the stimulus imparted to my 

 efforts by Prof. Alfred Newton, Mr Adam Sedgwick and Prof. E. Ray 

 Lankester. 



On two successive occasions my tenure of the Balfour Studentship has 

 been extended for a year beyond the allotted triennium. 



It is my earnest hope that the work now in course of publication 

 will be regarded by the Board of Managers of the Balfour Studentship 



