“Zoology at the Fisheries Exhibition”

Abstract

IN your issue of the 20th ult. (p. 489) a direct challenge is made upon several points as to the veracity of my former letter. “The Writer of the Article” states what he terms certain “facts”,—the first being that I informed the jury of Class V. that certain corals under my name, 813 b, were in the case with Lady Brassey's corals, and formed part of that collection. I beg entirely to deny this. What I stated to one of the members of the jury in answer to his allusion to my exhibit was, that owing to my being so busy I was unable to exhibit my own corals, and that all my energies had been thrown into the arrangement of Lady Brassey's case. Whoever informed “The Writer of the Article” must have greatly misunderstood my statement. The second “fact” with regard to the opinion of experts I think I need not answer. Opinions may differ. With regard to “fact” three, that neither the series of corals in the British Museum nor those of the Challenger Expedition have been accessible for purposes of examination for some considerable time. It will be sufficient to say that my description and figures of Lady Brassey's corals were published in the Annals and Magazine of Natural History, vol. ix. No. 50, in February, 1882, some time after the publication of the volume of the Challenger Reports containing Mr. Moseley's monograph of the “Hydrocorallinidæ”, and a considerable time after the specimens themselves were exhibited to public view in the galleries of the British Museum. Those specimens, together with the other corals of the general collection of the British Museum have only been withdrawn from public view within the last few months.