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Show 1888.] MR. G. H. FOWLER ON A NEW PENNATULA. 135 cannot, however, at all agree that these groups are of generic rank, and prefer for the present to adopt the generally recognized views on the subject. On this point, when criticising my own arrangement of the Vesper-Mice1, Dr. Winge writes2: " It is not right to recognize Habrothrix, Oxymycterus, and others as subgenera, and yet at the same time to admit genera of such a low grade as Sigmodon and Neotoma3, which might almost be muted to the Old-World Cricetus, or as Rheithrodon and Ochetodon, which do not even deserve sub-generic distinction." In answer to this, I can only say that my error, if error it be, in allowing genera of such a low grade as these quoted, will not be mended by the recognition of more groups, of lower rank still,-groups which I and all other previous authors have only looked upon as subgenera at most. In fact on this point I feel, with Dr. Coues4, that the proper way out of the difficulty will be rather by the lumping together of many of the present low-grade genera than by the recognition of more still less strongly marked generic groups. EXPLANATION OF PLATE V. Fig. 1. Skull of Beomys ferrugineus; natural size. 2-5. Ditto, upper, lower, side and front views; twice natural size. 6-7. Left upper molars of ditto ; magnified about 7 times. 8. Right lower molars of ditto. 9-10. Left upper molars of one of the Cricetinae {Cricetus frumcntarius) and one of the Murinte {Mus mettada); magnified about 5 and 7 times respectively. 5. On a new Pennatula from the Bahamas. By G.HERBERT FOWLER, B.A., Ph.D., Assistant to the Jodrell Professor of Zoology, University College, London. [Received February 14, 1888.] (Plate VI.) A fine example of a new Pennatula, sent by Mr. Blake, the late Governor of the Bahama Islands, to Prof. E. Ray Lankester, has been handed to me for description : I propose for it the name of PENNATULA BELLISSIMA, sp. n. (Plate VI.) Pennatula with 25-29 autozooids on a mature leaf, each with eight strong marginal spines, arranged in 2-3 rows, and continued on to the dorsal surface of the rachis as a single row of immature 1 P. Z. S. 1884, p. 448. 2 L. c. p. 144. 3 I do not think that Dr. Winge can have had a specimen of Neotoma before him when writing this remark, as of all the groups of American Criceti none is so distinct or so absolutely different from the rest as this is. The form in which his disparagement of Sigmodon and Neotoma is put, however, is a singular comment on the results of the present paper. 1 Mon. N. A m . Rod. p. 32 (1877): |