466 Reviews — Bernard's Madreporarian Corals. 



" The influence on the mind of the puzzled worker by such a group 

 of many individuals, showing great variations, yet undoubtedly 

 specifically identical, leads him, as a rule, temporarily to a wholesale 

 lumping of other specimens, until his courage fails him, when the 

 more striking individual variations are once more separately described 

 as new types." 



The above extracts will serve to convey the feelings of the author 

 in regard to the use and limitation of the term ' species.' Indeed, so 

 far back as 1896 he wrote: "It seems to me certain that we are 

 rapidly nearing the time when our ever-increasing collections, 

 revealing as they do the infinite grades of variation presented by 

 living organisms — especially by stock or colony-forming animals, 

 such as corals, in which the varying factors are doubled, — will 

 compel us to break loose from the restraint of the Linnean 

 ' species.' " 



We come now to the latest issue of Mr. Bernard's work on corals 

 (vol. iv, August, 1903), issued under the favourable auspices of 

 Professor B. Kay Lankester's administration as Director and Keeper 

 of Zoology. By the Director's advice, the author has made a special 

 study of the rich collection of fossil corals contained in the Geological 

 Department, which has revealed the fact that an important Tertiary 

 coral, Liiharma, is generically identical with Goniopora, and this 

 genus can now be 'traced back to early Cretaceous times, and had 

 its period of maximum development in the early Tertiary beds 

 of South Europe. The fossils, moreover, throw much light upon 

 the morphology of the genus. 



" The variability of the corals " (writes Professor Lankester) 

 " has, in previous volumes, been a good deal obscured by the 

 establishment of a number of so-called species; the author has 

 thought it right to cease establishing genetic groups without the 

 necessary data for so doing. He regards his task as that of pre- 

 senting the facts and what may legitimately be deduced from them 

 in the way that will be most useful to future workers and to the 

 officials of other museums. Experience alone can show whether 

 the method he has adopted in order to attain this end, however 

 faultless its logic may be, can be employed with advantage in 

 dealing with any other group besides the corals, or even whether 

 it is the best way of presenting the corals, having regard solely to 

 the facts. The attempt is, however, a sign of the times, for it is 

 clear that, whether the older school of systematists like it or 

 not, the question of method is an increasingly serious one, and 

 Mr. Bernard's attempt should stimulate inquiry outside the beaten 

 paths." (Introduction, p. i.) 



The first thing that will strike the reader is the change in the 

 formula, the author having completely abandoned the old methods 

 of naming in favour of geographical symbols. 



"It must, of course" (writes Mr. Bernard, p. 190), "be at once 

 admitted that names like those usually employed to indicate species 

 might have been used instead of geographical symbols. But the 

 objections to names seem to be many and serious. 



