General History of the Marine Polyzoa. 285 XXXII. — Contributions towards a General History of the Marine Polyzoa. By the Rev. Thomas Hincks, B.A., F.R.S. [Concluded from ser. o, vol. xv. p. 257.] [Plates VI. & VII.] XV. SOUTH-AFRICAN AND OTHER POLYZOA. The present paper concludes tlie first series of the " Contri-butions " so far as the descriptive portion is concerned. A second may follow after a time if it should be found that there is a sufficient amount of interesting material on hand to make it desirable. On referring to the first paper of the present series (which dates as far back as July 1880) I find that the programme proposed in it has only been partially realized. One impor-tant element of it has been almost entirely omitted — the record of the known species belonging to the various genera that have come under notice. It was soon evident that this por-tion of the plan would involve an expenditure of time and labour for which I was not prepared, and it was therefore abandoned *. Of course the description of new forms (or forms supposed to be new) has occupied a large portion of the work. About a hundred species, previously undescribed, have been fully characterized and figured. It may be interesting to contrast the style of diagnosis which is now generally adopted with that which satisfied the older writers and which survives in Busk's earlier works. In the latter brevity seems to have been the thing chiefly aimed at ; two or three leading features were considered sufficient for identification, and there was no attempt at anything like a complete portraiture of the form. Tiie present method is to make the diagnosis as full as possible (a very important point in the case of such a tribe as the Polyzoa), not merely to indicate two or three distinctive marks, but to present in detail the zooecial and colonial characters. There can be little doubt, I think, that this style of diagnosis is most in * The want -which I had hoped in .some measure to suppl}', tliough in an imperfect and partial way, has been satisfactorily met in the valu-able woi'k lately published by Miss E. C. Jelly, ' A Synonymic Catalogue of the Recent Marine Bryozoa,' whicli contains a list of the nanjes of all published .species, combined with a full .synonymy. Ann. tD Mag. N. Hist. Her. 6. Vol. vii. 20
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