i3 95 . SOME NEW BOOKS. 341 



plates and seventy-one text-figures being, to our mind, as nearly 

 perfect for their purpose as can be. For, while not equalling in 

 artistic beauty certain German plates of a similar nature, such as 

 those of J. D. L. Franz Wagner, yet they express to the eye the 

 objects represented, which are for the most part skulls and teeth, 

 more exactly than any figures that we ever remember to have seen, 

 and Dr. Merriam and his artists are heartily to be congratulated on 

 them. 



Of the very few misprints we have noticed, we may venture to 

 point out one which, occurring in the synopsis of genera, may easily 

 cause confusion to workers. This is that the top line of p. 24 should 

 be transposed to four lines lower, below the diagnostic character of 

 Zygogeomys. 



Altogether, apart from the splitting, which will undoubtedly be 

 considered too extreme by the majority of Old World naturalists, we 

 do not hesitate to assert that this is one of the finest and most careful 

 monographs of a mammalian group that has ever appeared, and we 

 trust it may be followed by many like it, thus properly utilising the 

 magnificent material contained in the department from which it has 

 issued. O. T. 



A Primer of Evolution. 



A Primer of Evolution. By Edward Clodd. 8vo. Pp.186. London : Longmans, 

 Green & Co. 1895. Price is. 



This little book has an importance out of proportion to its size, for it 

 is designed to bring the " comfortable word evolution " home to the 

 great heart of the people. While the " Origin of Species" has its 

 tens of thousands, Mr. Clodd's readers will be a great crowd, 

 innumerable as the sands of the sea-shore. For such a book, a 

 special standard of criticism is necessary. It were fruitless to object 

 to the hypothetical inclusion among organisms of the discredited 

 Ebzoon canadense, to the practical neglect of the wonderful series of 

 American beds that represent the gap that occurs in Europe, between 

 the end of the Chalk period and the beginning of the Tertiary strata, 

 or to the identification of the cavity in Hydra-like polyps with the 

 body-cavity of higher animals. Mr. Clodd's readers have no exami- 

 nations to pass ; it is the general and not the particular for which 

 they are ahungered. Each one of us, coming into the world and 

 struggling into a tiny place, sometimes must forget the perpetual 

 personal conflict in larger questions. It may be the wandering wind, 

 or the silent stars, or the repulsive profusion of life under an 

 up-turned stone that sets us thinking. What are we ? What is the 

 place of our littleness in the greatness of the universe ? 



For such questioners Mr. Clodd provides what answers are 

 possible. He shows the universe as an ordered system of change, of 

 evolution and devolution. " The universe is made up of matter and 

 motion, or, to put this in other words, the universe is made up of 

 distinct particles which are never still, whether they compose things 

 living or dead." ..." Nebulae, circular, elliptical, spiral are the 

 raw material of which suns and systems are formed. The nebulae ; 

 the fixed stars, with whatever belongs to the system of each ; the 

 wandering comets ; and the myriad meteor streams . . . com- 

 prise the ponderable matter of the universe." ..." The star 

 nearest to us is known as the sun, a mass of gas burning at so high 

 a temperature that all the chemical elements of which it is composed 

 are in a state of vapour." With the sun comes his system of planets, 



