Abstract
IN your issue for October 26, I notice an account of Leydig's recent paper on the auditory organ of the Gasteropoda, which, though excellent in other respects, has an error of omission which I should like to see rectified. When so important a discovery for morphology is discussed as that of the innervation of the otolithic sac from the supra-oesophageal in place of thesub-oesophageal ganglion which is its apparent connection in all Gasteropoda (excepting the Heteropodous forms), the credit of it should be given to the right man. That man is the most eminent and accurate of French comparative anatomists—M. Lacaze-Duthiers. Prof. Leydig states in the beginning of his own paper that Lacaze-Duthiers' statements on this subject (published in the Comptes Rendus about three years ago, if my memory serves me, and curiously mistranslated, sus-æsopkagien being rendered sub-œsophageal in one of the first numbers of the Monthly Microscopical Journal), caused him to direct his attention again to this subject, and he has, as a result, confirmed the observations of the French savant, which were in opposition to the previously-received views of all observers, himself and Leydig included. Germany has a host of indefatigable anatomists, and the services of Franz Leydig, of Tubingen, are brilliant enough to eclipse most zootomical reputations; but let us not, at this moment above all others, forget to do justice, when the opportunity occurs, to a naturalist whose comprehensive, accurate, and beautiful zootomical monographs, rich in discoveries, have done more than those of any other Frenchman to sustain the great name of Cuvier's school.
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LANKESTER, E. The Auditory Nerves of Gasteropoda. Nature 5, 143 (1871). https://doi.org/10.1038/005143a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/005143a0
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