iS95. SOME NEW BOOKS. 21 r 



in the problems of mij^ration, distribution, variation, and liabits 

 presented by the best known group in our insect fauna. The labour 

 involved in such an undertaking as this is immense. We heartily 

 congratulate the author on the progress which he has made, and hope 

 we may see the succeeding volumes appear at less distant intervals 

 than that which has elapsed since we had the pleasure of noticing the 

 first. 



Outlines of Zoology. 



Outlines of Zoology. By J. Arthur Thomson, M.A., F.R.S.E. Second Edition 

 revised and enlarged with 266 illustrations. Pp. 820. Edinburgh and London ; 

 Young J. Pentland, 1895. 



The second edition of Mr. Thomson's text-book from the outset 

 impresses itself on one more favourably than the first. For the 

 illustrations have been greatly improved ; many new drawings have 

 been added and they appear in the text in their appropriate places. 

 Some of them are still inadequate. Thus, in the transverse section of 

 the earthworm, the ccelomic epithelium is omitted ; the mass of 

 chloragogenous cells in which the dorsal blood-vessel is embedded is 

 exhibited as a mysterious, unnamed structure, different in appearance 

 from the similar cells surrounding the intestine ; the nephridia are 

 omitted entirely and they are not figured elsewhere. Again, in the 

 drawing of the reproductive organs of the same animal (after Hering) 

 the ovaries are incorrectly represented. In the figures of the urino- 

 genital organs of the frog, the male represented is Raiia esculenia and 

 does not show the characteristic seminal vesicles which the student is 

 bound to see in the Rana temporaria he is more likely to dissect ; in the 

 female, the ovaries are quite incorrectly represented; the characteristic 

 plicated appearance of these, when they are not entirely obscured by 

 a mass of discharged ova, is not shown. In the diagrams of the 

 similar organs of the rabbit the uterus masculinus is not visible in the 

 case of the male, while, in the female, the relations of the bladder to 

 the uterus are quite inadequately represented. We have pointed out 

 such slips perhaps more carefully than their intrinsic importance 

 warrants ; but they all relate to animals that a student is certain to 

 dissect. And nothing is more harassing to a good student or more 

 apt to harden the heart of a careless, than to find his dissections 

 incongruous with the figures of his text-book. 



For the rest we think Mr. Thomson's text-book one of great merit. 

 It is weak in palaeontology ; but as practical palaeontology hardly 

 comes the way of the student, this matters less than in many books 

 of wider aim. It is unusually and strikingly excellent in that it deals 

 with the animals as living things as well as materials for the scalpel. 

 To each section there are appended notes on what Professor Lankester 

 has called bionomics, and many students, whom the details of anatomy 

 Avould repel, may find that there are "observables" (to use the phrase 

 of Robert Boyle) concerning animals as interesting, and, from the 

 point of view of abstract knowledge as important, as laboratory 

 work. 



From one point of view, however, we have something to say 

 against the book. To a certain extent it is based upon the Scotch 

 courses of natural history. These, in the brave days of old, before 

 modern science had been developed into its present encyclopaedic 

 character, were designed to impart to the perfervid talent of Scotch 

 youth a complete account of the natural world. They used to begin 

 with cosmogonies and end with the marvels of design as exemplified 

 in the structure of the human fraine. Into this old bottle is poured 



