158 Mr. A. W. Waters on the Term " Bryozoa." 



too constantly repeating my opinions on the name ; but there 

 is one point which, except for absence abroad, I should sooner 

 have pointed out ; that is, if we take the fourth paragraph on 

 page 129, and substitute for Polyzose Thompson's own defini- 

 tion as it appears in the title, we get, " Animals of some Cel- 

 lularias, Tubuliporse, and Flustracea? proved to be new animals 

 discovered as inhabitants of some Zoophytes." 



It is, as Mr. Hincks sees, according to our present ideas 

 unmeaning; but this and the sentence quoted, I can only 

 repeat, seem to me to show most clearly that he means by 

 Polyzoa a single polypide. 



The question has been put so ably by the writer of a review 

 of Mr. Hincks's recent book in ' The Popular Science Re- 

 view ' for April 1880, that I should quite hope that this may 

 induce Mr. Hincks and some of his followers to again consider 

 the question. This writer says that he cannot agree that 

 Thompson used the name as a class designation, and not the 

 name of a merely structural element, and considers that it was 

 used by Thompson as the mere name of a single zooid, and 

 that he was following the practice of some of the older syste- 

 matists, such as Linnaaus, who uses the term Hydra to 

 designate what he calls " flores." My friend Mr. Hincks 

 apparently thinks the position he holds is quite clear, and 

 feels strengthened by the fact that some of his friends still 

 believe in the name they are now accustomed to ; while to me 

 it still seems equally clear that Thompson used the term for 

 a single polypide ; and I have the support of many friends 

 whose judgment I value. 



Prof. Rupert Jones has also replied to my note in the 

 1 Annals ;' and I quite agree that he would have been more 

 correct if he had written " Polyzoa, Busk," instead of " Poly- 

 zoa, Thompson." I said that in Ehrenberg's " Die Coral, 

 d. R. Meeres ' I did not find any indication of the Foramini- 

 fera being included. Prof. Jones points out that they were 

 included in a paper written six years later ; and it is quite true 

 that Ehrenberg, at this time, while fully recognizing the 

 difference between Polythalamia and Bryozoa, made an 

 extraordinary blunder with regard to their classificatory rela- 

 tionship ; but the term was no longer his private property, and 

 any mistake he made after having definitely established the 

 group does not invalidate his previous classification. 



