A Proposed Handbook of the British Marine Fauna

Abstract

SUCH a handbook as Prof. Herdman suggests is so much wanted that many naturalists must from time to time have felt tempted to essay it. But the difficulties are very formidable. Prof. Herdman seems to contemplate the preparation of such a work mainly as a labour of compilation. But the groups where compilation would nearly suffice are just those where the handbook is least required. On the other hand, such a group as the Amphipoda, in spite of Canon Norman and Mr. Stebbing's many papers, is still in great need of revision; it was only the other day that Canon Norman opened our eyes to our rich fauna of Mysidæ, before which time no search among published records would have told us anything worth the having; we are in just the same position as to our British Cumacea, until Canon Norman again reveals the treasures of his cabinet; our Pycnogrns are almost as little known. In every one of these groups, and in many others like them, the preparation of a hand-Iist would need the experience of a specialist, just as much as the Tunicata would require Prof. Herdman's own special knowledge. The area to be embraced is another difficulty. Prof. Herdman proposes to take the British area as defined by “Canon Norman's” B. A. Committee in 1887, on which he himself served. But the committee's report was repudiated by Canon Norman himself, who afterwards suggested a wider “British area,” whose boundaries I fancied had since been recognized as more suitable by everybody. However the British area be defined, there will long remain a difficulty in the numerous forms not yet recorded from within it, but which are likely, or certain, to turn up when sought for. Such things as he parasitic and other Crustacea described of late years by Giard and his pupils from Wimereux form a case in point. I am inclined to think that to make in the first instance a hand-list of the whole fauna of the North Atlantic basin would be not a bit more difficult, but in some respects easier, than to restrict the list to the British area alone. That it would be incomparably more useful is certain. It would make a book not more than three times (perhaps little more than twice) as big as Carus's “Fauna Mediterranea.” And it would be a very important step towards that new systema naturæ of which the Germans are already beginning to talk, and which it is high time were begun.