Dr. J. E. Gray on Trionyx Phayrei. 87 



Dr. Anderson says he lias carefully compared the skull of 

 his specimen of Trionyx Phayrei with that in the British 

 Museum which is named Trionyx Jeudii^ and he cannot de- 

 tect any characters to separate the two. I regret that, as he 

 seems to have had the skull in England to compare, he did 

 not show it to me, who am so well acquainted with the skulls 

 of the genus. 



The papers of Dr. Anderson in the ' Proceedings of the 

 Zoological Society ' for 1871 do not give one a very high 

 opinion of the state of zoological knowledge in the Imperial 

 Museum at Calcutta*. They all belong to what Prof. Edward 

 Forbes used to call the school of zoology that regarded animals 

 as skins stuffed with straw; for they contain no reference to 

 any points in the internal structure or economy of the animals 

 described, indeed little but tlie details of the species that can 

 be derived from the inspection of figures made by a native 

 artist, who merely copies what he thinks he sees — which is the 

 more extraordinary, as Dr. Anderson, besides being Director 

 of the Imperial Museum at Calcutta, is Professor of Compara- 

 tive Anatomy of the Medical College of that city. He has 

 been shown that the form of the skull, the form of the palate, 

 and the structure of the alveolar surface of the jaws form very 

 important characters for the distinction of the species of the 

 genus Trionyx in its widest sense ; yet here we have a descrip- 

 tion of a doubtful species in which none of these points are 

 mentioned ; and the only particulars of the species which 

 he gives (for Dr. Anderson does not undertake to give spe- 

 cific characters) are measurements of the different parts, 

 which are given in such a way that one cannot understand 

 whether they are intended for inches and lines or for inches 

 and tenths ; and one is not helped by consulting his other 

 papers, where he appears to use a different system. The 

 sternum is thus described : — " Seven osseous plates, of which 



* Dr. Anderson, as Director, claims the monopoly of describing and 

 naming; for he observes: — "I cannot allow Dr. Jerdon's statement that 

 he had my permission to describe and name this lizard to pass without 

 comment. I placed the museum collection of reptiles at Dr. Jerdon's 

 disposal for comparison ; but I certainly never contemplated that he would 

 make use of the confidence I reposed in him to describe this lizard with- 

 out my sanction." (Proc. Zool. Soe. 1871, p. 166.) This regulation is 

 neither advantageous to the study of zoology, the advancement of the 

 collection, nor to the scientific knowledge of the curator, as it prevents 

 healthy competition. For the last half-century that I have been con- 

 nected with the British Museum, every one (native or foreign) has had 

 full permission to use anv of the zoological specimens as if they were his 

 own, on the simple condition that he does not injure them or render them 

 less useful to his successors ; and this principle has certainly worked well 

 for science and for the collection. 



