THE VICTORIAN NATUKALIST. 



reference was made to that great mine of information, " The 

 Reports of the Challenger Expedition," and it was found that 

 Quelch, in vol. xvi., on " The Reef-Building Corals," recorded one 

 species and mentioned another from Australian shores, they 

 being P. urvillei and P. jjei^oni, M. Ed., but no reference was 

 given for the last species. Whitelegge's reference to the " Annales 

 des Sciences Naturelles " was then looked up, and there seemed 

 to be little doubt that my specimen agreed with the figure and 

 description of P. urvillei. Moreover, the descriptions of the 

 other species of the genus given in the same paper were read 

 through, but mine differed from all in some point or other. 

 Still there remained P. peroni, a description of which I had not 

 seen, for I knew that Tenison Woods, in one of his papers on 

 fossil corals, casually mentioned that the common species on 

 our shores was P. peroni, and as corals are not easy things to 

 determine with absolute certainty, it was advisable that the 

 description of the last species should be looked up. But looked 

 up where ? Hitherto I had not got a reference, and the species 

 was not mentioned in the only paper of Edwards and Haime I 

 had consulted. In the Challenger article mentioned above the 

 reference given to P. urvillei was almost meaningless, and 

 evidently the paper I had consulted was not the one meant. 

 The reference runs — " Plesiastrma urvillei, Milne-Edwards and 

 Haime, Cor. H., p. 490." Now, the Royal Society of London 

 has published a catalogue of all scientific papers — that is, articles — 

 published between 1800 and 1883, but it contained no paper the 

 title of which could be shortened into Cor. II. A suggestion 

 that it might be a Biblical reference was . not acted upon. 

 Evidently, then, it was no.t a "paper," but must be an inde- 

 pendent book. There is a British Museum catalogue of books 

 where, in default of other means of finding its title, I could have 

 gone ; but, before doing so, I turned up the literature on corals 

 in Nicholson and Lydekker's "Manual of Paleontology," and 

 there I found " Milne-Edwards and Haime — Histoire Naturelle 

 des Coralliaires," which was evidently what I wanted. On 

 turning up the catalogue of the Melbourne Public Library the 

 title was wanting. This was a severe blow. Nor was it in 

 the University Library. However, no catalogue is perfect, nor is 

 it expected to contain books bought since its publication, so that 

 the precaution taken of asking if the work was in the Public 

 Library was justified, for I found that it was. The description 

 of P. peroni, which I had hoped might be in this work, was 

 there, and it, together with the figure, showed the distinctness 

 of my specimen. Having, then, the original descriptions and 

 figures before me, I decided that my specimens were certainly 

 P. urvillei. 



Now, the present notes have been prepared merely as an 



