Miscellaneous. 439 



any specimens in groups, I shall not venture to express a positive 

 opinion upon the supposed identity between the two genera. I 

 desire to offer a few observations upon a reference to two 

 names I gave to two species of Cllmaxodus, and to the contents 

 of a footnote on p. 328 of the ' Annals ' for November. In reply 

 to those paragraphs, I have to state that the specimen of Cli- 

 maxodus ovatus which was named by me before a large audience in 

 the Lecture Hall of the Mechanics' Institution, Newcastle-on-Tyne, 

 on Sept. 28, 1868, is now in the British Museum, and that a spe- 

 cimen marked by Messrs. Hancock and Atthey Climaxodus linguce- 

 formis is now on the shelves of the Museum of the Natural-History 

 Society, Newcastle-on-Tyne. Although there is a general resem- 

 blance between them, there is sufficient dissimilarity to justify 

 their being provisionally named as different species. The si^ecimen 

 I named Cllmaxodus vermiformis (Geological Magazine, Aug. 1869, 

 p. 381) is less like C. lingxicvformis than is C. ovatus ; and how 

 Messrs. Hancock and Atthey, who have never seen the latter spe- 

 cimen, can say that it more nearly resembles C. linguceformis than 

 does C ovatus, I am at a loss to understand. 



The substance of the footnote appended to Messrs. Hancock 

 and Atthey's paper amounts to this. C. ovatus and C. linguce- 

 formis were published at the same date, Nov. 1 ; but Mr. Atthey 

 read his paper on Oct. 9, and there is no satisfactory evidence that 

 I publicly named C. ovatus at an earlier period. I have to confess 

 myself a little surprised at this statement. It was my opinion, 

 until I read Messrs. Hancock and Atthey's paper, that scientific 

 men gave each other credit for speaking the truth in relation to 

 matters of fact ; and when I stated, in the ' Geological Magazine ' for 

 Nov, 1868, that I had publicly named and described C. ovatus on 

 the 28th of Sept., it occurred to me that that statement was suffi- 

 cient e^•idence of its truth. It is not, however, to Messrs. Hancock 

 and Atthey ; and it may not no2u be to readers of the ' Annals ' 

 with whom I am not acquainted, and who have seen my truthful- 

 ness impugned. What do Messrs. Hancock and Atthey consider 

 evidence, and what to them is publication ? The papers of the 

 Tyneside Naturalists' Field-Club are generally read to about twenty 

 3»lembers ; the address I delivered was to an audience of about 400 

 persons ; and surely Mr. Atthey's unannounced paper, read before a 

 small number of persons, almost in darkness, in a remote sea-side 

 inn, was not more prominently brought forward than was my state- 

 ment delivered eleven days previously to 400 persons in one of the 

 chief institutions in Newcastle-on-Tyne, with the specimen exhibited, 

 and with illustrations of the form and chief characteristics of the 

 tooth sketched on a large blackboard. Messrs. Hancock and Atthey 

 say, that were mj' statement even correct it would be no such publi- 

 cation of species as to secure priority ; and then, as though they 

 desired to convey the idea that it was not " strictly correct," they 

 say, " Where, however, is the record either naming or describing at 

 tliis time C. ovatus'^ AVe have searched for it in vain." 



The evidence, in addition to my testimony, might easily have 



