Page:The Zoologist, 3rd series, vol 1 (1877).djvu/549

Rh path in the Zoological Society's Gardens, Regent's Park. These appear to me to possess all the characters assigned to the species now under consideration, although I have not yet had an opportunity of examining them under the microscope, and satisfactorily determining the presence or absence of teeth.

The occurrence, then, of this annelid in England having been placed beyond doubt, it is to be hoped that observers in different parts of the country will look out for it, investigate its habits, and forward for publication the results of their researches. Worms and leeches with most people are not especial favourites; but, under the present aspects of science, they are of more than usual interest, particularly as regards their habits and modes of development.

 

—In 'The Zoologist' for October (pp. 458 seqq.) you published a review of my 'List of British Birds.' With your kind permission, I desire to make a few remarks in reply. In the first place, your reviewer finds difficulties in regard to Sundevall's system, which a reference to his 'Tentamen' would have easily dispelled; most of the objections that he raises are inseparable from a simply linear arrangement. But when objection is taken to my definition of a British bird, I must answer that I aimed at making, not a Census, but a List. It is not to such a mere enumeration as mine that a zoological geographer appeals when he wants to know what species are really indigenous or natural to any given country. But surely it does throw light on a fauna to have on record even the isolated occurrence of the most alien species, thus showing not only its resources as a metropolis, but also every form which it is capable of associating to itself. Your reviewer not unjustly dreads an undue multiplication of genera, but the retention of the Serin in the genus Fringilla is rendered impossible by the acceptance of Sundevall's method; he places the one in the family Chloridinæ, characterized among other particulars by the absence of vibrissæ, and the other in the family Fringillinæ, where the vibrissæ are evident. And surely the separation of Helodromas from the Totani requires no apology when, as pointed out by your reviewer, it depends upon an obvious osteological difference, which similarity of external circumstances shows no tendency to obliterate. The inconsistencies of terminations to which your reviewer alludes depend on a simple question of grammar. Phœnicurus and rubecula are substantives standing in apposition to their respective generic names; 