The Natural History Museum—A Correction

Abstract

IN a paper of mine on Ilyopsyllus coriaceus, which appeared recently in the Natural History Transactions of Northumberland and Durham, I referred to certain dissections—which had been described by Mr. Thomas Scott, and are now in the Natural History Museum at South Kensington—as having “deteriorated so as to be useless,” at the same time ascribing this statement to Prof. T. Jeffrey Bell, who had kindly examined the dissections at my request. The statement, so far as Prof. Bell's authority is concerned, is not quite accurate, and at his request I wish to be allowed to correct it in your columns. What Prof. Bell told me was that the dissections consist of “nothing but unrecognisable fragments,” and that “Mr. Pocock, who had charge of the Crustacea in 1893, says the tube came there in the state it is in now.”