974 Editors Table. [October, 
will be remembered as a physiologist for his discovery of the 
principle of the physiological division of labor, as well as his 
laborious and extensive work, in fourteen volumes, on compara- 
tive physiology and anatomy. But as a zoologist his fame was 
wid e was to France what Owen is in England and Agassiz 
was in America. His special anatomical memoirs were conspic- 
uous examples of the skill and nicety in injection and dissection 
which characterized the Cuvierian school, his treatises on the 
organs of circulation of Crustacea being of marked beauty and 
value. His general zoölogical works were the Histoire Naturelle 
des Crustacés, published with the aid of Audouin, and with 
Haime, an extended work on corals. Biologists, being human 
beings, have a spice of dogmatism and sectarianism in their 
nature, and in a notice of the great French naturalist in an Eng- 
lish scientific journal, it is stated that Milne-Edwards did not late 
in life change his views as to the origin of species. We never 
knew, however, of his publicly attacking champions of the new 
biology. In his son, Alphonse Milne-Edwards, the family name 
is not now less conspicuous than for the past fifty years as a lead- 
ing one in French biological science. 
The U. S. Coast Survey, which for so many years under 
the direction of Bache and others rendered such signal service to 
Science while pursuing its legitimate work, has been clouded by 
alleged official misconduct. Charity will be felt for any one who 
suffers official punishment after life-long services to science and the 
public welfare. Long before the present civil service reform in poli- 
tics, the Coast Survey was managed with singular ability and 
economy. Its work will go on as long as geological agencies 
produce changes, however minute, in our coast lines and harbor 
approaches, whether “a thousand years” or more. Our other 
scientific bureaus have certainly been conducted with far more 
ability and economy than some departments and bureaus filled 
by political appointments. Still, rigid economy and business tact 
will be demanded of our scientific directors and commissioners, 
as they have been in the past. 
We have received’ the following : 
Editor American Naturatist—Sir:—In the August issue of 
the receipt as desired.” 
Pardon me if I suggest that the above criticism has been made 
ithout due reflection. First, experience demonstrates that the 
ceipts sent with the volumes are returned in a much smaller 
