170 Transactions of the Society . 



found scattered widely in various European periodicals, and so are 

 difficult to be procured ; while, of those that have been published 

 separately, the best are rare. 



Under these circumstances I thought it not improbable, that the 

 members of our Society might be glad to know that the task of 

 studying and condensing these memoirs had been in the main accom- 

 plished, and that I am able now to present them with some of the 

 results. 



Jn the first place, I made a list of all the known species, and 

 marked against each the various localities in which it has been found. 

 It was curious to see, as the table grew, how certain well-known Eoti- 

 fera were picked out by their rapidly advancing scores, till at last 

 about fifty typical Eotifera were separated from the rest, while of 

 these a smaller group enjoyed the further distinction of having a very 

 wide range, not only in latitude and longitude, but also in altitude. 



The same table showed, at a glance, that Great Britain decidedly 

 outstripped all other countries in the number of its recorded species, 

 having quite two-thirds of the whole. Nor was this all; for the 

 Eotifera seemed, like trade, to follow the flag, and to haunt the 

 British colonies, just as if they were British ships. 



The reason for this curious pre-eminence of British Eotifera is 

 clearly seen, when we notice how those species are distributed, which 

 have as yet been found in one country only. There are about 240 

 such species ; and of these no fewer than 173 (that is to say, more 

 than two-thirds) are peculiar to Grreat Britain. It is of course obvious 

 that this apparent selection of Great Britain as the fatherland of the 

 Eotifera is simply due to the greater energy, industry, and skill with 

 which the search for new species has been pursued in this country. 

 It is, however, very remarkable that the naturalists of Great Britain 

 should in late years have added to the Eotiferous fauna two-and-a- 

 half times as many species, as the naturalists of all other countries put 

 together have done ; and this highly honourable result is mainly due 

 to members of your own Society, and especially to my deeply lamented 

 colleague and dear friend, the late Mr. Philip Henry Gosse, F.E.S. 



After I had seen how greatly the value of the recorded distribu- 

 tion of the Eotifera was affected by what I may term the " personal 

 equation," I at first feared that I should obtain little else from my 

 tables than a well-merited tribute to the energy of British naturalists. 

 Further inspection, however, showed other points that are well worth 

 your notice. 



In the first place, my lists showed that Germany, Switzerland, and 

 Hungary come next in order to Great Britain in the total number of 

 species that each records, and I have only to mention the names of 

 Ehrenberg, Ley dig, Cohn, Grenacher, Zacharias, Eckstein, Plate, 

 Imhof, Perty, Bartsch, Vejdovsky, Zelinka, not to say many others, to 

 make it obvious that the result is due, not to the real distribution of 

 the species in these countries, but to the comparative skill and 

 industry of their naturalists. 



