138 A SCIENTIFIC APPRECIATION [oh. vi. 
species (which the limited facilities at his command 
in the way of books and specimens for comparison 
may excuse), and perhaps a naturalist of his clear¬ 
ness and insight might have shaken off some of the 
inherited fallacies of classification, such as including 
spirally coiled Foraminifera among Cephalopods, yet 
so good was his workmanship that the book 
remains not only interesting but valuable. Let 
us again illustrate the wholesome humour of the 
man:— 
“ I present it with confidence to the public; 
because I am conscious of having prepared it with 
great care, and because I think it will be useful. 
The specific descriptions I have made fuller than 
usual, because I am anxious to induce my pupils, 
not to content themselves merely with learning the 
names of objects, as I have observed to be the 
prevailing practice both here and elsewhere. It is, 
in fact, a matter of no importance to an individual, 
by what name an object is known to him, provided 
he be acquainted with its structure and relations; 
although a fixed nomenclature is essential to the 
general progress of knowledge. For this reason, I 
have not withheld the various species which have 
appeared to be new to science, although the want 
of access to all the works and essays published 
of late years, leaves it probable that some of them 
have been already named. It is but a pitiful 
manifestation of self-esteem to withhold the know¬ 
ledge of an object, lest it should ultimately be 
found to have been already communicated in some 
work inaccessible to the student. Besides, if I have 
ignorantly given new names to objects already 
named, who of the most successful cultivators of 
zoology has not often committed similar errors ? ” 
