472 Prof. Milne-Edwards's Reply to Prof. Sedgwick. 



and in the general classification of the Palaeozoic corals ; the 

 manner in which the previously established genera are united to 

 form natural divisions of superior value ; the characters assigned 

 to these divisions and the names given to them ; in short, the 

 whole systematic arrangement. 



The First Fasciculus of our ' Monograph of the British Fossil 

 Corals' was principally devoted to the exposition of our general 

 classification of the class of Corals, and did not contain the de- 

 scrij)tion of any Palseozoic fossils. 



It is therefore evident that the above-quoted note, relative to 

 the similarity of the results presented in both publications, could 

 not be a])plicable to anything else than the systematic part of 

 Prof. M 'Coy's work, and what we added about the names given 

 to his divisions is not susceptible of any other interpretation. 

 Consequently we must examine whether the blame so implied in 

 that note be founded or not. 



Our classification was published in England in 1850*, and 

 was known to Prof. M'Coy previously to the printing of most 

 part of his w^ork, since he mentioned the existence of it in the 

 very beginning of his book (p. 17). 



Now the classification presented by Prof. M'Coy bears the 

 greatest resemblance to ours ; some parts are new and belong to 

 that palaeontologist, but most of his divisions are exactly the 

 same as ours, and even bear the same names. 



Nowhere, however, does he intimate, even in the most distant 

 way, that the classification thus developed in his book is essen- 

 tially or in part ours. He intermingles the divisions founded 

 on the results of his own observations with those previously esta- 

 blished by us, and in examining his book, every unbiased reader 

 would be led to suppose that the various families and subfamilies 

 there described, and even the system of classification altogether, 

 was the scientific property of the author. Prof. M'Coy even 

 goes so far as to say that he has not profited materially by any 

 new portion of our Monograph not previously published in the 

 ' Comptes llendus de PA.cad. des Sciences;' whereas there are 

 some important parts of his classification that we claim, and that 

 had never been mentioned in the ' Comptes Rendus.' The di- 



* I do not clearly understand w hat Prof. M'Coy means, in his argumen- 

 tation about the date of this work ; and I must add, that what he says about 

 the date of the ])ublication of our French work (the Monographic des 

 Poly piers Pala;ozoiques)is not only completely irrelevant to the j)oint in dis- 

 cussion, but also erroneous. It was the First Fasciculus of that work which 

 we mentioned in our note as having appeared previously to Prof. M Coy's 

 book, and the date assigned to it by that gentleman (the 26th of June 1861) 

 IS not that of its publication, biit in reality that of tlie publication of the 

 Third and last Fasciculus of the same book. This attempt to make our 

 statement appear contrary to truth is therelVtrc unsuccessful. 



