1897] SOME NEW BOOKS 133 



four other classes of the Mollusca might have had more than eight. 

 We should not, even in a geological guide, expect to find the Bracbio- 

 poda and Bryozoa associated with the Arthropoda and Vermes as a 

 ' Subkingdom Annulosa.' To balance the fifteen pages on sponges, 

 or the seventeen figures of trilobites, we should have asked for more 

 than twenty-four lines on those particularly interesting forms, the 

 Cystidea and Blastoidea, especially as our national museum possesses 

 not only a fine collection of these rarities, but an officer well qualified 

 to deal with them. And, in the account of the sponges, one might 

 have suggested that a simple division into Silicispongiae and Calci- 

 spongiae scarcely represented modern ideas of classification. Finally, 

 we should have demanded very much better paper and printing ; and 

 even now we hardly consider that the get up of the work befits a 

 great public department — it is certainly inferior to that of previous 

 Guides. 



But whether regarded as a text-book or as a guide there is no 

 doubt that in many respects the work is a great advance on anything 

 hitherto attempted at the price. We hope that the public will 

 recognise this, and that the speedy exhaustion of the edition may 

 pave the way for another with all the merits and without the few 

 defects of the present one. 



" PALAEONTOGRAPHICA " AMONG CRIMINAL LITERATURE 



Relics of Primeval Life. By Sir J. W. Dawson, K.C.M.G., F.R.S. 8vo, pp. ix. 

 336, with 67 figs. London : Hodder & Stoughton, 1897. 



Sir William Dawson's book on " The Dawn of Life " having been 

 for some time out of print, he has prepared the present volume to 

 take its place. A good deal of the old matter and many of the illus- 

 trations therefore naturally reappear. The familiar story of the dis- 

 covery of Eozoon, and of the spread of the belief in its organic 

 structure, is again told, and Sir William Dawson refers to the prin- 

 cipal criticisms on the other side. On pp. 273-274 Eozoon is made to 

 tell the story of its own existence in an imaginary autobiography. 

 It candidly admits its low intelligence and that it did not know 

 whence it came ; but " at length a change came. Certain creatures 

 with hard snouts and jaws began to prey on me." Apparently the 

 most objectionable of the hard-snouted generation was Mobius, whose 

 work, in spite of its "large and costly figures" (p. 161), is described 

 as valueless, owing to " that narrow specialism and captious spirit for 

 which German naturalists are too deservedly celebrated." Mobius, 

 according to Sir William Dawson, " did his best ; " but so bad is his 

 best that the publication of his memoir " was a crime which science 

 should not readily pardon or forget on the part of the editors of the 

 German periodical " in which it appeared. 



Sir William Dawson does not give his opponents a very cordial 

 invitation to continue the discussion, for he remarks in reference to 

 the honest way in which Eozoon did his duty, that those who " dispute 

 as to his origin and fate " are " much less perfectly fulfilling the ends 

 of their own existence." So we will try to fulfil the ends of our own 

 existence by discussing subjects in which an adverse verdict is not a 

 " crime." 



