and Biffiugian BMzopods. By G. G. Wallich. 211 
tlie alleged discoveries and observations of Professor Leidy were 
most of them, if not all, forestalled by me some twelve or thirteen 
years ago ; although I will at once do Professor Leidy the justice 
to declare my implicit conviction that he puhlished his recent papers 
in entire ignorance of my having handled the same subjects so long 
ago before him. 
It is, moreover, necessary that the matter should he placed in 
a proper light, inasmuch as one or both of the notices in the 
Microscopical Society's Journal have apparently heen made the 
groundwork of a somewhat similar notice which appeared in the 
' Academy ' of March 13, a copy of which was sent me hy a friend 
in order to draw my attention to what was going on. The com- 
mentator in that journal wrote in a most friendly spirit, hriefly 
citing "some remarkable observations made by Dr. Wallich in 
1863, which were puhlished in the * Annals and Magazine of 
Natural History' for that year, adding that I had at the time 
furnished him with living specimens in confirmation of my re- 
searches. Unfortunately, and no doubt most unintentionally, this 
friendly critic stopped a little short of the mark, for he did not state, 
as he certainly would have heen justified in doing, that I had been 
the first to discover and name the very Ehizopod Amoeba villosaj 
which, so far as cafiThe gathered from the brief notices referred to, 
constituted one of the principal subjects of Professor Leidy's investi- 
gations and descriptions. But I had also seen in the November 
number of the ' Monthly Microscopical Journal ' an account, some- 
what mor6 in detail, of certain observations by Professor Leidy on 
Biffiugian Ehizopods supposed by him to be new, and of which he 
had puhHshed a description in another recent number of * Silliman's 
Journal.' Now, unless I am very greatly mistaken, these very 
Biffiugise will be found to have heen fully described, and, what is 
more, carefully figured by me in my monograph of the entire 
family which appeared in the Annals for March, 1864. 
I am quite sure it is only necessary for me to refer Professor 
Leidy and readers of American scientific journals to the series of 
observations contributed by me in 1863 and 1864 to the 'Annals 
and Magazine of Natural History,' and to some later papers which 
appeared in the * Monthly Microscopical Journal ' in 1869, to ehcit an 
ungrudging acknowledgment that some, at least, of the observations 
on the Amoehan and Biffiugian Ehizopods referred to as having so 
recently heen put forth in ' Silliman's Journal ' had long since heen 
recorded hy me ; although Professor Leidy and I, unfortunately, 
entertain very different opinions on the interpretation of characters 
said to involve generic and specific distinctions. 
It is not my intention, and I am glad to be able to beheve that, 
in the present instance, it is quite needless for me to enter into any 
lengthened discussion on the subject. I have too much faith in 
