MARSHALL: ALTERATIONS IN ‘ BRITISH CONCHOLOGY.’ 29 
Chiton hanleyi Bean. Jeffreys (‘ Lightning’ Report) has 
changed this name to C. mendicarius Mighels on the 
ground of priority; but the identity of Mighels’ species 
with Bean’s is not uncontested, and Gray, on presumably 
good grounds, had long previously changed the name to 
C. debilis, by which it is more generally known. 
Mr. Dall (‘ Explor. Alaska’) and Professor Haddon 
(‘ Chall.’ Report) cite C. dedzlis and C. mendicarius as two 
species without expressing any opinion on them. 
We have recently been told (') that we have no Chitons 
in England; they are all something else. The statement 
in itself would hardly require further notice, but that the 
writer of it adopts the extraordinary and unusual assump- 
tion that it is the result of “the light of our advancing 
knowledge,” and he holds up to compassion, as being in the 
outer pale of darkness, those who may not acquiesce in it. 
A proper appreciation of contemporary writers should 
teach him that this is fallacious, and that the differences 
between naturalists arise from some preferring to treat 
sections or sub-genera as such, while others regard them as 
genera, as to which every one has a right to judge for him- 
self, We are now invited to divide our small group of 
eleven species of Chzfon into no less than six genera—a 
long step towards a condition of things so strongly protested 
against by a well-known author, when “we shall soon have a 
distinct generic title for every specimen of a shell we possess, 
and the confusion of the Tower of Babel will be reproduced 
in conchology.” And when it is considered that these old- 
new names have been proposed, some for more than a 
century, and none less than half-a-century ago, it is not 
quite clear how they have evolved from “the light of 
our advancing knowledge.” And yet this brand-new 
arrangement, after leaving the writer’s hands but before it 
can reach the reader, undergoes yet another rearrangement ! 
(«) Malacological Society's Proceedings, 1894. 
