Bihliograpldcal Notices. 131 



Eccorder. If Recorders undertake work when they live at inacces- 

 sible distances from the libraries of great cities, they must suffer for 

 their zeal and bu)' the books ; if they plead that British-Museum 

 catalogues are very expensive, we can onlj' answer that the just- 

 mentioned naturalist's account of the Pterophoridoe of California, 

 which might have been bought for a few shillings, is not even men- 

 tioned by name ; nor would Dr. Jentink have been ruined by the 

 price of the second edition of Mr. Pascoe's ' Zoological Classification,' 

 which he notes as not having been seen. 



There are some striking errors in judgment : we must own that 

 we do not think we could have recorded Mr. B. Clarke's ideas on 

 zoological classification once (it is here done twice) without a very 

 serious disturbance of our risil)le faculties ; we should have doubted 

 the value of teaching zoologists how to clean cover-glasses ; and 

 although we know that a correspondent of 'Science Gossip' performs 

 admirably well his duties as a waiter at a hotel in Canterbury, we 

 should not have handed to posterity' his account of his inspection of 

 a Rotifer. We should have refrained from taking advantage of our 

 position to name an unnamed species (pt. i. p. 289) ; and we should 

 not have done more than give the titles of the papers in which Pro- 

 fessors Agassiz and Bell amused the Zoological Society with their 

 different accounts of what the elder Agassiz meant. 



One or two other criticisms remain to be made ; if the chapter on 

 sponges is to be taken as a type of the whole, misprints abound ; 

 e.g. Ohalina fostilis for C.fertUis (p. 174); Monoxidos for Monax- 

 idfe (p. 176); the charming generic term Protoschnidtia has a t 

 between the P and j- ; CJadoriza, which, by the way, is a genus of 

 Sars's (1872), and not a new genus, is sjielt CMadoriza; and on the 

 same page (p. 183) we have vdijica for sUiJica. Some of Yosmaer's 

 new species of Clathria are given, but C. eler/ans is omitted. Among 

 the Bryozoa we find no note of Mr. Haswell's new species, Mt/rio- 

 zoum auxtrcdiense. 



To sum the matter up, we will make two comparisons between a 

 •part of the Naples ' Record ' that appears to us to be, from their point 

 of view, particularly well done, and the same part in the English 

 Record. Prof. Ludwig and Prof. Bell both appear to devote the 

 greater part of their energies to the Echinodermata ; and both omit 

 one, though a dift'erent, paper of considerable importance. We can- 

 not understand how one who has to do with collections which come 

 from all parts of the world to the British Museum could have 

 neglected to make himself acquainted with the important work of 

 Mobius on the faima of Mauritius ; and Ludwig's omission of De 

 Loriol's valuable monograph on Egyptian fossil Echinids is a matter 

 for regret. Mr. Bell notices it, and, we observe, does not fail to 

 indicate that the veteran echinologist is not satisfied with his new 

 genus. But, as to brevuty (no inconsiderable virtue), compare the 

 two. The Englishman writes, " Asterias palcpocnistcdlKs, Sladen, 

 is a Pedicellaster ; Ann. N. H. (5) v. pp. 21G, 217." The Naples 

 Recorder gives seven lines to the same point. Lengthiness some- 

 times leads to confusion ; uo one who looks at the German account 



