1880.] Progress of American Carcinology in 1879. 499 
tute an inquiry as to the reasons for this low condition of scienct. 
There is an institution in this country known as “ The American 
Association for the Advancement of Science,’ surely a hig 
sounding title; but would it not be well for the Association 
to begin to carry out its object? to do something for the 
advancement of science? Judging from the character of the 
papers published in its somewhat voluminous proceedings, it acts 
as a drag rather than an aid to progress. I might here add that 
aside from its grants of money to the Zodlogical and Geological 
Records, and to specialists to enable them to carry out certain 
lines of investigation, its British prototype is no more worthy of 
its pretentious name. 
he American carcinological literature of 1879, may be con- 
sidered under three heads, systematic, anatomical and develop- 
mental. Systematic papers have been published during the past 
year by Dr. Walter Faxon, Messrs. Oscar Harger, C. L. Herrick 
and J.S. Kingsley, Prof. A. S. Packard, Jr, Mr. John A. Ryder 
and Prof. S. I. Smith. Mr. Faxon gives an account of a species 
of Lucifer; provisionally referred to the species ¢ypus of Milne 
Edwards. Mr. Ryder describes as new Chirocephalus holmanit* 
and Streptocephalus seali} from New Jersey. Having seen speci- 
mens of the former species, I can say that it is not a species of 
Streptocephalus, as Dr. Packard seems to suspect,’ but truly 
belongs to the genus Chirocephalus, where Mr. Ryder placed it. 
Dr. Packard has recently® proposed a new order, Phyllocarida, to 
receive Nedalia and its fossil allies; and in his recently issued 
Zodlogy® has given a new classification of the Crustacea, which 
was repeated in outline in the December NATURALIST. 
The work of Harger on the Isopoda of New England, Herrick 
on the Minnesota Entomostraca, and Smith on the New England 
Decapoda, have been already noticed in the Naturatist, and 
hence need not be referred to again. Mr. Kingsley has con- 
tributed several short notes and reviews in the various numbers 
* Description of Lucifer typus M. Edw.? Chesapeake Zodlogical Laboratory ; 
me results of the Session of 1878, pp. 113-119, Pl. VII, 1879. 
? Des on of a new species of Chirocephalus. Proc, Academy of Nat. Sci., 
Slr ay 1879, pp. 148-149. 
* Description of a new Branchipod, 1l. c., — pp. 200-202. 
* AMERICAN NATURALIST, XIV, p. 53 (1880). 
$ AMERICAN NATURALIST, XIII, 128, and Annals and Mag. Nat. His., 111, 459. 
* Zodlogy for Students and General Readers, N. Y., 1879. 
