714 NATURAL HISTORY MISCELLANY. 
wards attempted to show that Ophiura was preoccupied, and 
made a name, Ophioglypha, to take its place; and owe questign 
now is, shall it be written Ophioglypha nodosa Ltk. or Ophio- 
glypha nodosa Lym? Dr. Lütken has no cause for aeon nea 
There are two parties to this question. That to which he belongs 
when an author’s name is lost sight of. The party whose views I 
hold maintains that nomenclature is a system of exact registration, 
and that, with the present enormous mass and confusion of titles, 
other guide is possible; and further, that the credit of a 
zoologist does not rest on his monogram, but on something better. 
Bias e To sum up, Astrophyton costosum Seba, and Ophioglypha 
nodosa Lyman, mean ne what they should mean, and nothing 
more ; to wit, that in the writings of these two persons will be 
We may add that the following rule regarding this subject was 
adopted (1868) by the Council of the Peabody Academy :—“ Vo- 
ted: that in labelling the collections the name of the person who 
first united the generic and specific appellations shall be given as 
the authority for the name, and that when the name of the original 
describer of the species is given it shall be in parenthesis.” 
NATURAL HISTORY MISCELLANY. 
BOTANY. 
THE Parastie Fuxcı Founp 1N tHe Human Ear have recently 
been studied by Dr. Karsten. He confirms the statement made by 
Hallier and other previous observers, that when the spores of 
these fungi are sown elsewhere they assume very different forms, 
according as the matrix on which they are sown is rich or poor in 
material for nutrition; and that fungi described by early writers 
as distinct species, or even as belonging to different genera, are 
frequently merely different forms of the same plant. 
PE ae RERNE ey E > eee ee ee 
