BATHER.ĩ / NOTE SUR LES DATES DE PUBLICATION DU "SYNOPSIS DES ECHINIDES FOSSILES" DE DESOR. Lambert, combined with an examination of certain copies of the work, I have drawn up a collation for the use of librarians. I am very grateful to him for allowing me to include this original matter in the present publication. Jules Lambert, whose profound knowledge of the fossil echinoids and of the literature relating to them is admired by all students. It is therefore a peculiar pleasure to me to be able to publish with this Index a Bibliographic Note from the pen of Mr. To the systematist a knowledge of the dates at which the various fascicules were issued, and of the changes made in the text of cancelled pages, is an undoubted necessity but it is a knowledge that most of us have been quite unable to obtain. Palaeocidaris, occur only in the earlier issues others, e.g. This last point is of particular importance, for, although every bound copy of the Synopsis is furnished with a title-page bearing the imprint " Paris, Wiesbade, 858," and although the book is always assigned to that year in Library Catalogues and Bibliographies, still it was really published in livraisons or fascicules issued at various dates from 855 to 858 and some of the pages in earlier fascicules were subsequently cancelled and replaced by fresh pages, sometimes of increased number. Not only is every page referred to, but when there were two or more issues of a page, each is entered and distinguished by the addition of the date, thus (857). Many names that occur only in these places, or in the additions and small-type notes of the Synopsis, are likely to be overlooked, and it is difficult to find them without such an Index as the present. they also contain some species and names that do not occur in the body of the work. The indexing of the Plates is an important feature, sinceĨ 6 Index to Desors Sy7iopsis. Certain names or associations of names are, however, only to be found in these Tableaux, and have, therefore, been indexed. The only exceptions are the pages of the Avertissement (vii.-xlvi.), of the Tableau de la Distribution (xlvii.-lxviii.), which in itself constitutes an index of a different kind, and of the Tableau des Synonymes ( ), which is yet another kind of index. a reference is given to every page on which a name occurs, as well as to the plates.
The same course has been followed with such variants as Cidaris and Cidarites, which clearly were not intended to represent distinct genera. When names are spelled incorrectly or inconsistently by Desor, they are indexed as he spelled them, but a cross-reference to the correct spelling is given whenever it seems desirable. This is the more necessary because Desor was not always either consistent or correct in his use of gender. In drawing up the alphabetical order of Part I., no attention has been paid to the masculine, feminine, or neuter endings of one and the same adjective ( i/s, a,?/ /, and is, e), but the sequence under that trivial name is determined by the alphabetic order of the generic names with which it is associated. Certain details of the indexing require explanation. The names of genera are also placed in their alphabetical position in Part I. It consists, that is to say, of two parts : in the first the species are arranged alphabetically under their trivial names in the second the generic names are indexed, and each such name is followed by the number of the page on which its diagnosis occurs, and then by every trivial name that is anywhere associated with it in the Synopsis. The present Index, therefore, has been prepared on the plan followed in the well-known "Index Animalium" of Mr. Unfortunately reference to this work has always been rendered difficult by the lack of an index, a want that is felt more and more as time goes on, and as the various genera are sub-divided, and the species, for that or other reasons, appear under different generic names from those in the Synopsis. Secondly, many of the genera, though included on account of their fossil representatives, are not entirely extinct, so that the student of the recent species is bound to consider their fossil allies and to take into consideration the names given to them.
First, the book, though professedly dealing with fossils, does actually contain several purely recent genera and species. I say every worker, and not only every palaeontologist, for two reasons. Although published more than half-a-century ago, the " Synopsis des Echinides Fossiles," by Pierre Jean Edouard Desor, is a work still in constant use by every serious worker on the Echinoidea.