Critical Notes on the Polyzoa. 83 



XII. — Critical Notes on the Polyzoa. By the Rev. Thomas 

 HiNCKS, B.A., F.R.S. 



Part II.* — Classification. 



1. Preliminary Section. 



Many years have now elapsed since the publication of Smitt's 

 fruitful work on the Scandinavian Polyzoa f, in which a new 

 basis of classification was proposed and the foundations of a 

 natural system were sought, not in the comparatively trivial 

 variations of colonial growth and habit, but in the more sig- 

 nificant and essential characters of the individual zooecium. 

 When it is remembered that the older classifications were 

 founded primarily, without exception, on zoarial peculiarities, 

 we can feel little surprise that the proposals of the Swedish 

 naturalist, discrediting as they did the fundamental principle 

 on which they rested, were at first regarded as too revolu- 

 tionary in character, and failed to produce any immediate 

 effect on the systematic treatment of the Polyzoa. Probably, 

 too, the fact that his great work, containing a singularly able 

 and exhaustive account of his researches and theoretical views, 

 is written in the Swedish language may help to account for 

 the comparatively long period during which its specific claim 

 was almost unrecognized and its influence but slightly felt. 

 Certain it is that so late as 1880, when my ' History of the 

 British Marine Polyzoa ' was published, the principal writers 

 on the Class gave at least a nominal adherence to the old 

 views, and that in no systematic work had Professor Smitt's 

 principles been adopted and applied. 



To estimate rightly the work which the Swedish naturalist 

 has accomplished in this department of zoology we must 

 remember that it is not a mere revision of an existing system 

 that we owe to him, but the institution of a new system, 

 resting on new foundations, and implying a new interpreta- 

 tion of the facts with which it deals. His distinctive merit 

 is that he substituted zooecial for colonial characters as the 

 proper basis of a natural arrangement, thus giving a new 

 direction to research and preparing the way for a system which 



* Part I. was published in the ' Annals ' for February 1887. 



f " Kritisk forteckning ofver Skandinaviens Hafs-Bryozoer," Ofvers. 

 af Kongl. Vetenskaps-Akad. Forhandlingar, 1864-67. In 1867 the prin- 

 ciples on which his classification was founded were discussed in a paper 

 entitled " Bryozoa Marina in regionibus arcticis et borealibus viventia, 

 recensuit F. A. Sniitt,'' Ofvers. K. Vet.-Akad. Forh. 1867, no. 6. 



G* 



