1897] SOME NEW BOOKS 271 



productive of aught but confusion, and wo are astonished to find it 

 adopted by so careful a worker as Professor Kokcn. 



We realise the enormous labour expended on this work, which 

 may be of use to many under the guidance of a good teacher, and as 

 a supplement to scientific palaeontology on the one hand and to iield- 

 work on the other. But we ourselves prefer Professor Koken when 

 playing his other parts of original investigator or high-class populariser. 



Miniatures by Hansen' 



Tine Ciioniostomatidak. A Family of Copepoda, Parasites on Crustacea Malacostraca. 

 By Dr H. J. Hansen. 4to, pp. 206, with thirteen copper plates. At the expense 

 of the Carlsberg Fund. [Author's Motto: — "We want facts, not inferences, 

 observations, not theories, for a long time to come." — Natural Science, 1896.] 

 Copenhagen : Andr. Fred. Host & Son, 1897. 



Within the memory of men still living an artist could obtain a 

 respectable reputation and a good income by painting miniatures. 

 The features of the original might reach any assignable degree of the 

 plain and the commonplace. It mattered not ; the portrait on ivory 

 was always like and always lovely. All this delightful flattery has 

 been destroyed or banished by photography, cheap and (sometimes) cruel. 

 But Dr Hansen's volume proves that there are mysteries of portraiture 

 with which the camera is still incapable of dealing. Though the 

 likenesses are not those of decorated officers or fashionable beauties, 

 but of forms more fitted to excite wonder than admiration, the picture 

 of each is drawn by him with exquisite delicacy of touch and the 

 most minute attention to detail. Each is confined within the compass 

 of an inch or two. But really this is a gigantic enlargement. The 

 true miniature is the natural object, often only one-hundredth of an 

 inch in length, and sometimes much less. Under a powerful micro- 

 scope animals of this size may become decently conspicuous. The 

 same can scarcely be said of the mouth, which in the Choniostomatidae 

 is not only absolutely but relatively small. It may be left to pro- 

 fessed arithmeticians to calculate the dimensions of their two pairs of 

 antennae and three pairs of jaws and the joints thereof, all which 

 need observing for purposes of full and accurate scientific description. 

 When it is added that the animals are not transparent, and that they 

 will not submit to pressure, the microphotographer will probably 

 leave them for the present, without attempting to challenge the 

 deftness of Dr Hansen's pencil. 



For the neglect which this curious family has till lately ex- 

 perienced there is more excuse than usual. The poet might bewail 

 that in labouring to lie short he became obscure. These Copepoda 

 were probably short without labour and obscure by preference. How 

 else can we account for their choosing to belong to the neglected class 

 of Crustacea, choosing a life of self-effacement within that class, 

 choosing their hosts chiefly among its unpopular and little known 

 sessile-eyed groups, and burying themselves for the most part in 

 brood-pouches and branchial cavities ? To lie plain, they are crus- 

 taceans parasitic on crustaceans principally on Amphipods, Isopods, 

 and Cumacea, having been found in only a few instances on stalk- 

 eyed shrimps. A solitary species courts the public gaze on the outside 

 of its host's body. 



