1899] PRACTICAL ZOOLOGY 145 



the position of the species under investigation, but of course not intended to 

 supplant the ordinary text-book of systematic zoology. The study is divided 

 into twenty lessons, and at the beginning of each is a short statement of the 

 material and reagents required, followed by a general account of the Class or 

 Order. The directions for the actual dissection and demonstration are clear 

 and straightforward, and are elucidated by a number of figures. Of these 

 illustrations many are original, and due either to the author or to his pupils, 

 Messrs. Th. Krumbach and A. Giltsch. Others are borrowed, and we are glad 

 to note that the original source is given with accuracy; but is not "Fig. 95. 

 Organisation von Holothuria tubulosa (aus Lang) " really copied from Milne 

 Edwards and Carus ? The drawings are good, they will help to sell the book, 

 and the beginner will be grateful for them. None the less, they may tempt 

 the student to adopt the easier course of lifting them into his note-book instead 

 of drawing from the object before him. And is it not a good training for the 

 student to direct him to the original monographs, and to let him copy the 

 figures (if he does it at all) from the first source of each ? There is little in 

 this book to lead the student on, or to disabuse him of the notion that, when he 

 has worked through what is here, he will have as thorough acquaintance with 

 the various types as is needful. The course is professedly an elementary one, 

 and little attention is paid to other methods than those of dissection with 

 scalpel and needle. But even so, it is startling to find Sepia taken as the type 

 of a Cephalopod, and yet no description given of the cuttle-bone. 



There are so many good books of the kind nowadays, that this one by 

 Professor Kiikenthal is not likely to find a large sale outside Germany, even if 

 translated. But it can be recommended as accurate, clear, and adapted to the 

 somewhat narrow limits of an elementary course. F. A. B. 



MONTH BY MONTH. 



Rambles with Nature Students. By Eliza Brightaven, F.E.S. Pp. 221, 

 with many illustrations. London: Religious Tract Society, 1899. 



Mrs. Brightwen has published another of her delightful little books of talk 

 about common things. The present volume contains six or seven short chapters 

 for each month, and with just a little help from the treasures of her museum 

 in the barest months the authoress contrives to find interesting subjects 

 throughout the year. In the dull days she gives us pretty and well-illustrated 

 studies of ice-crystals, footprints in the snow, skeleton leaves, birds' feet and 

 skulls, ventriculites, and various other matters. During the brighter months 

 she writes simply and clearly of many familiar insects and flowe v 3, and of some, 

 too, like those in her chapter on "Hidden Lives," that are known only to those 

 whose eyes have been trained to see. Her descriptions are always vivid and 

 interesting, and the practical directions frequently given are clear and simple. 

 Her neAv book will prove not only helpful and stimulating to those who have 

 already clone some work for themselves, but will also be a most comforting- 

 guide for such easily-discouraged little people as the twelve-year-old, who 

 abandoned the study of natural history because, as she plaintively said, the 

 beasts never had any habits when she was watching them. 



The naturalist's delight in living things for their own sake by no means 

 obscures Mrs. Brightwen's keen appreciation of their practical aspects. Thus 

 we may learn from her chapter on the development of flies what precautions 

 should be taken to protect our meat from bluebottles, from the life-story of the 

 meal-worm how to keep up an unfailing supply of animal food for our cage 

 birds, and she tells us, too, that a tonic beverage may be made from acorn- 

 kernels, and that she was able to express from a fungus, the "maned agaric," 

 a serviceable ink whose qualities were unimpaired after eleven years. The 

 ingenious way in which, by a process of pith-slicing and repeated ironing, she 



10 XAT. SC— VOL. XV. NO. 90. 



