Correspondence 



60 1 



rejoice to know that King's Lynn how deserves a better place than 

 he gave it. There is, we believe, a widespread movement forward 

 in our provincial museums. Eastbourne is one in which a much 

 better museum has recently been built, which is likely, we believe, to 

 be yet further enlarged. From personal knowledge we are aware 

 that it ought not to have been placed in our list where it was. We 

 shall be only too glad to be called upon to offer a similar apology and 

 like congratulations to many other towns. — Ed. 



Limbs Repaired at Short Notice, 

 to the editor of the " museum gazette." 



Dear Sir, — It is annoying to buy an expensive umbrella one day 

 and lose it the next. I am not quoting, only telling of what I have 

 actually .suffered. There are shops which give promise of " umbrellas 

 recovered while you wait," but none of them specify how long you 

 may have to wait for the promised recovery. There is something of 

 the same indefiniteness in a passage which your reviewer last month 

 (p. 515) introduces to notice from Mr. Sinel's "Outline of the Natural 

 History of our Shores." It will be convenient to reproduce it : " One 

 more curious feature in ecdysis. If a crab has, some time prior to 

 the process, lost a leg or two, an eye or claw, the emerging form 

 has these in perfection. (This quite independent of the frequent 

 process of the replacement of lost limbs from a bud which appears 

 on the scar.) If a limb gets broken off just before the moult I do 

 not know what happens. This I have not seen, and in this book I 

 am nowhei^e quoting, only telling ot what I have observed." 



The wording of the paragraph seems to imply that Mr. Sinel has 

 himself seen cases in which a crab, that had been for some unspeci- 

 fied length of time minus an eye or a limb, has shed its coat and 

 thereupon appeared with the missing appendage in full development. 

 So novel an observation should surely be accompanied by some 

 explanatory details. It has usually been supposed that anything 

 like perfection in a restored crustacean limb is only gradually 

 attained after several moultings. How such perfection can even be 

 approached independently of the process of replacement from the 

 bud on the scar is a new problem fraught with mystery. In thin- 

 skinned species it is often easy to see what may be called a new 

 appendage in great perfection within the old integument which is 

 about to be discarded. But a perfected new limb ready to emerge 

 from the stump of an old one verges so nearly on the miraculous 

 that one would fain plead for further enlightenment on the new 

 pathology. 



Yours sincerely, 



Efihraim Lodge, Thomas R. R. S tebbing, 



The Common, Tunbridge Wells, 

 March 23, 1907. 



