TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION C. 681 



(especially the Trilobita, Phyllopoda, and Ostracoda), the Echinodermata, Corals, 

 Graptolites, Sponges, and Foraminifera. 



It would be an interminable task merely to record the workers in the various 

 sections of palaeontology, but in glancing at these one cannot prevent many illus- 

 trious names arising in one's mind — many who have finished their work, and are 

 reckoned among the fathers of the science, but many also who are still our com- 

 panions, and from whom we may expect further important help before they lay 

 down their hammer, their lens, and their pen. 



In the Cephalopoda the task so lately left by our countryman Dr. Wright, 

 after a long life devoted to palseontological science, has been taken up by Mr. S. S. 

 Buckman, who has already presented one fasciculus of a monograph on the 

 Ammonitidse of the Inferior Oolite. 



The Gasteropoda of the Oolites have an able historian in Mr. W. H. Hudleston, 

 whose contributions on this subject enrich the pages and plates of the ' Geo- 

 logical Magazine' and the 'Proceedings of the Geologists' Association'; the 

 Palaeozoic forms are in the hands of Dr. Lindstrom. 



The Lamellibranchiata cry for help at present in vain, and we regret more than 

 ever the loss of Stoliczska, who promised such good work had his life been spared. 



The Brachiopoda, so long and so well cared for by Dr. Davidson, now also 

 demand a successor to that illustrious name. 



The Polyzoa, which suffered so severe a loss in the death of Mr. Busk, have 

 since been well cared for by Mr. Arthur W. \\^aters and Mr. Vine. 



Until quite lately, the oldest fossil insects known were the six fragments of 

 wings of Neuroptera, from the Devonian of New Brunswick, obtained by Mr. C. F. 

 Ilartt and described by Mr. S. H. Sciidder. More lately the wing of a cockroach 

 has been obtained from rocks of Silurian age in Calvados, France ; whilst almost 

 simultaneously fossil scorpions have been met with by Dr. Hunter, of Carluke, in 

 the Upper Silurian of Lanark, and determined by Mr. B. N. Peach, and from the 

 Upper Silurian of Gotland, described by Dr. Lindstrom. 



These discoveries carry back our records of old land surfaces to a far more 

 remote period than that of the Coal-measures, vast as its distance is removed from 

 recent times. 



Mr. B. N. Peach is the discoverer of several scorpions, and I have also recently 

 figured and described three new forms of cockroach and several spined myriapods 

 from the Coal-measures. Another cockroach, also new, which has been kindly sent 

 me for study by Mr. Peach, brings to our knowledge a larval stage of Blatta from 

 the Scottish Carboniferous. 



Dr. McCook has just added a genus of spiders, Atypus, to our Eocene beds from 

 the Isle of Wight. 



The Crustacea have found in Mr. B. N. Peach and in Professor Rupert Jones 

 able and willing historians, Mr. Peach has taken up the Carboniferous Macrouran 

 Decapods, and Professor Rupert Jones the Palaeozoic Phyllopoda, aided by myself; 

 Professor Jones is attacking the Tertiarj' and Cretaceous as well as the Palaeozoic 

 Ostracoda, so that his hands will be full for many years to come. 



The Echinodermata have lost Dr. T. Wright, who for years acted as their mono- 

 grapher in the Palaeontographical Society's volumes, but they have secured the 

 services of other accomplished naturalists. Mr. Robert Etheridge.jun., and Dr. P. 

 Herbert Carpenter have produced a grand monograph on the Blastoidea in the 

 British Museum ; and no doubt this is but the beginning of good things to come, for 

 although Mr. Etheridge has entered upon a new sphere of work in the Australian 

 Museum, Sydney, Dr. P. Herbert Carpenter hopes to take up the stalked Crinoids 

 before long, and Mr. Percy Sladen, who, with Professor P. Martin Duncan, has 

 already done so much good work amongst the Indian Echinoderms and elsewhere, 

 promises to take the star-fishes in hand for us later on. 



The Corals have many friends, chief amongst whom is Professor P. Martin 

 Duncan, and Professor H. A. Nicholson, and various other excellent workers, 

 but they are even a more difficult and a less attractive group than the Echinoder- 

 mata, and their determination is not so satisfactory, owing to their irregular and 

 heteromorphic growth. 



