356 



NATURE 



\_Anonst 1 8, 1881 



Panizzi agreed to these terms, and offered "to wait on the 

 Committee, as soon as convenient to them, to settle the manner 

 in wliich they wish the woric to be executed." 



Now the whole gist of this quarrel consists in this, that the 

 Library Committee naturally wished to control Mr. Panizzi in 

 his mode of executing the work, while he refused to be con- 

 trolled or interfered with in any manner. He even regarded 

 as personal enemies all those who attempted so to interfere. He 

 fancied that every one who differed from him was actuated by a 

 sense of personal dislilce. When he refused Dr. Roget's request 

 to revise the sheets of the Catalogue, he says (p. 6) : "I jiad no 

 idea wdien I so candidly expres-ed my opinion that I was making 

 a powerful and unrelenting enemy in one of the 'most influential 

 officers of the Royal Society." At p. Jl he says : "so gratuitous 

 an insult would never have been allowed had not Mr. Baily filled 

 the chair at tliat meeting." And again (p. S), " My statements 

 will be received with derision by those who know that they may 

 be unjust with impunity." At p. iS he charges the Committee 

 with "indelicate conduct," at p. 22 with "absurdity," at p. 25 

 such things were done "purposely to annoy me ;" and a^'ain, 

 "No suggestion of mine would ever be attended to by the 

 Council." At p. 26 his work was regarded with "a malignant 

 eye ; " at p. 28 " The annoyance was incessant," " injurious and 

 unjust ;" at p. 33, ^"treating me as if I were their servant," 

 "unwarrantable liberty;" p. 38, "unjustly interfered with;" 

 p. 41, "insulted with an order of submitting my work to 

 revision. ... I shall never c insent for any one, be he Hho he 

 may, to make any alterations in it." And when, on June 24, 



1836, he was requested to attend the Library Committee on the 

 following Monday at 4 p.m., he declined on the ground that 

 "when I attended before I was not so well satisfied \vith my 

 position as to wish to be in it again." At p. 54, when clamour- 

 in^ for payment of an unascertained balance which he claimed, 

 he charges the Council with not meaning "to pay it unless they 

 be compelled to it. . . . Possibly there is some legal means of 

 obtaining redress ; but in a country like this justice is not a 

 luxury for a poor man to indulge in ; and the Council, having at 

 their disposal the funds of the Royal Society, can amuse them 

 selves without personal trouble or loss with a law-suit which I 

 have not the means of sustaining." Will it be believed, in the 

 face of .-^uch language as this that Panizzi had already been paid 

 the sum of 450/., and his whole remuneration was not to exceed 

 500/. 



In his second pamphlet (p. 18), after charging the Council 

 with not meaning to act fairly, he hurls at it his " unmixed 

 disgust and contempt." But I cannot help thinking that these 

 vigorous epithets woidd have been more appropriate had they 

 travelled the other way. 



\\'hen requested to return the printer's revises, and he refused 

 on the ground that they were his own property, together with 

 the key of a drawer in one of the Royal Society's rooms, and he 

 also refused, what wonder that, after so long a contest with this 

 cantankerous man, the Council should have resolved on July 14, 



1837, " that Mr. Panizzi be no longer employed in the formation 

 of the Catalogue." 



The reader may well exclaim by this time, What is all this 

 hubbub about? Simply tliis : Mr. Panizzi insisted on adding to 

 some of the items of the Catalogue original comments of his 

 own, to which the Library Committee justly objected as com- 

 mitting the Society to opinions of doubtful value. Panizzi 

 attached tlie greatest importance to these notes and comments. 

 "The Committee, far from objecting to them, ought to have 

 been thankful that I had taken the trouble of introducing them " 

 (p. 31) ; and he proceeds to quote specimens illustrative of this 

 part of his work. For example, he says : " To the ' Memoires ' 

 of Charnieres on the observations of the longitude, I added this 

 note : ' All the author's additions and corrections carefully put in 

 by J. B.' This note is on the title-page of this copy, and the 

 volume is interspersed with alterations in manuscript. I sup- 

 pose f. B. to mean James Bradley." Later on in the same page 

 he adds : "The author's additions, if put in by Bradley, are, of 

 course, of much more value than if written by any other J. B." 



Now the book in question is only a single Memoire of De 

 Charnieres, not a collection of "Memoires," as described by 

 Panizzi. Moreover, there are five reasons why the additions 

 and corrections could not have been written in by Dr. Bradley. 



1. He died five years before the memoir by Dr. Charnieres 

 was published. This may well excuse the other four reasons, 

 but they are curious as illustrating the carelessness of a man 

 who was convinced of his own infaUibility. 



2. The writing of the anonymous J. B. is small and neat : that 



of Bradley large and awkn ard. The Royal Society had in its 

 possession manuscripts of Bradley and his signature, which could 

 be seen by merely a-king the assistant-secretary for them, and yet 

 Panizzi did not submit the writing of J. B. to this simple test. 



3. Bradley was uot in the habit of writing in his books. 



4. The so-called "additions and corrections" are simply the 

 corrigenda collected into eight pages at the end of the book, and 

 tran-ferred in MSS. to the text, a fidgety piece of work, not 

 hkely to be undertaken by so busy a man as Bradley. 



5. At the end of the book J. B. drops his incognito and 

 appears as J. Bevis, a fact overlooked by Panizzi. 



Other similar examples might be given, and indeed were 

 submitted to the Fellows of the Royal Society at the time, in 

 order to justify the resolution of the Library Committee "that 

 all comments or notes expressing matters of opinion on the 

 articles in the catalogue be omitted " ; but the statement of them 

 would occupy too much space, dealing as they do with details 

 which unless given in full would not be understood. 



Mr. Panizzi was undoubtedly a vigorous clever man ; but in 

 the matter of books, he, unfortunately for his own reputation, 

 aspired to universal knowledge which belongs to no one. The 

 gold of a universalist is apt to shrink down into dress when 

 tested in the crucible of a specialist. Having occasion to con- 

 sult a book by Gay-Lussac, and not finding it in the Catalogue 

 of the British Museum Library, the attendant requested me to 

 write the name and title on a slip and show it to Mr. Panizzi. 

 No sooner had he glanced at the slip than he exclaimed "Ah! 

 you have made a mistake : it is Guy-Lussac ! " This readiness 

 on all occasions to say something apparently to the purpose, 

 may impress subordinates with a sense of power on the part of 

 their chief, but to tell a chemist that Gay-Lussac is Guy-Lussac 

 would be much the same as telling him that potash and soda are 

 identical compounds. C. ToMLlNSON 



Highgate, N., August 2 



The Oldest Fossil Insects 



In a paper on "The Devonian Insects of New Brunswick" 

 (Bull. Mus. Coinpar. Zoology, iSSi, vol. viii. No. 14) I have 

 drawn attention to the fact that a fern on the same slab with 

 Platephemera was determined in 1S68 by Prof. Geinitz as Peco- 

 pteris plumosa, and therefore the slab considered by him as 

 belonging to the Carboniferous. I believed that here an impor- 

 tant gap was still to be filled, namely, the reliable determination 

 of the fern, which is not mentioned in Mr. S. H. Scudder's mono- 

 graph, nor in Principal Dawson's note on the geological relation 

 of those i isects, which closes Mr. Scudder's paper. 



A paper by Mr. Dawson (Caiiad. Naturalist, 1881, vol. x. 

 No. 2) is intended to fill this gap. The fern is after the study 

 of the original specimen determined as Pecoptcris serrulata, 

 and said to be a common species in those beds. If I am not 

 entirely mistaken it will be difficult to agree with Mr. Dawson's 

 opinion (I.e. p. 2) " that doubts and suspicions thus cast on 

 work carefully and exhau^ively done should not seriously affect 

 the minds of naturalists," as it happens that in his work of 18S0 

 this common species is not quoted at all among the plants found 

 in those beds, except in a note (p. 41) stating that in the beds 6 

 to 8 three or fom" other species occm-, among them probably 

 P. serrulata. Mr. Dawson quotes for the species the figures 

 207 to 209 in his Report of 1870, but I confess to be unable to 

 recognise the Platephemera fern in those figures. 



Prof. O. Heer h.as kindly drawn my attention to his "Flora 

 Fossilis Arctioa of Bear Island, Spitzbergeu, 1871." He has 

 given (pp. 14, IS) a detailed review of the fossil plants from St. 

 John's, New Brunswick, and, as he still believes, has proven that 

 those layers do not belong to the Devonian but to the Ursa 

 stage of the Lower Carboniferous. This important and elabo- 

 rate statement is disposed of by Mr. Dawson, as far as I know, 

 only in his report, 1873, p. 8, in the following words : — "The 

 so-called Ursa stage of Heer includes this {Lower Carboniferous), 

 but he has united it with Devonian beds, so that the name cannot 

 be used except for the local development of these beds at Bear 

 Island." 



It is true that Mr. Dawson, in the supplement to the third 

 edition of the "Acadian Geology," 1878, p. 72, has tried to 

 explain the different opinion of Prof. Heer by the earlier intro- 

 duction of the Pak-eozoic flora in American formations. But 

 this fact, known by every one, and of course by Prof. Heer, is 

 not considered by him to be a sufficient objection to the state- 

 ments given in the "Flora of Bear Island." 



The paper of Prof. Heer states carefully and exhaustively the 



