NOTICES OF BOOKS. xxxi 



to the study of microscopic forms of life, though in this department but little progress has as 

 yet been made. In England several amateur photographers are turning their attention to this 

 work, and we have hopes of soon seeing considerable advances made. 



Altogether the book is an excellent summary of the subject, and the appearance of an 

 English translation will, we hope, stimulate to fresh endeavours the numerous amateur photo- 

 graphers who at present seem to find a difficulty in selecting some subject to which to turn their 

 attention. In the past, the most remarkable advances in photography have been due to 

 amateurs ; in the future, we may expect equally brilliant results if only their efforts be properly 

 directed. The subject treated in the book before us holds out great promises of success to 

 any one taking up its study. 



.•/ Monograph, of the Mycetozoa, being a descriptive catalogue of the species in the herbarium of 

 the British Museum, illustrated with 78 plates and 51 woodcuts. By Arthur Lister, 

 F.L.S. Printed by order of the Trustees, 1894. 



Mr. Lister is well known as an authority upon the Myxomycetes, and his fine monograph, 

 which appears under the auspices of the Trustees of the British Museum, will not only add 

 lustre to the name of its author, but will prove a quite indispensable addition to the library of 

 every one who is interested in this remarkable group of plants. 



The introduction provides a useful general account of the organisms, whilst the diagnoses 

 both of the main sub-divisions and also of the individual species are carefully and accurately 

 executed, and to a great extent are based upon Rostafinski's work. Those species which, for 

 various reasons, present special difficulties, are exhaustively dealt with, and the directions and 

 limits of their individual variability are well defined. 



We notice that here and there Mr. Lister has removed some forms from their old positions, 

 and has located them in other genera. This is especially the case where the distinctive marks 

 are perhaps not very obvious, and have thus been insufficiently appreciated by other writers 

 less intimately familiar with the plants in question. Thus Chotidrioderma difforme here re- 

 appears under the generic name of Didymiiun, with which it is certainly more appropriately 

 classed. 



Any notice of the book would be inadequate which omitted to mention the beautiful 

 photographic illustrations which fill the 77 plates included in the volume. They are repro- 

 ductions largely from Miss Lister's drawings, and of their wonderful fidelity, as well as of 

 their beauty, it is impossible to speak in terms of too high praise. 



The Cell: Outlints of General Anatomy and Physiology. By Dr. Oscar Hertwig. Trans- 

 lated by M.- Campbell, and edited by Henry Johnstone Campbell, M.D. Swan 

 Sonnenschein & Co., 1894. 



The appearance of O. Hertwig's book, Die Zelle und die Gezvebe, in 1893, marked an 

 epoch in the progress of cytology. But so fast have new facts been accumulated that some of 

 the statements and generalisations contained in the original work are to-day only of historical 

 interest. It was then the more essential that a translator who proposed to edit such a book 

 should himself be perfectly au courant with his subject. 



But, as a matter of fact, we find many slips and inaccuracies in the volume which Dr. 

 Campbell has given us, and some of these are not such as we should have expected to find in 

 an " edited " translation. Thus, since the time at which Hertwig wrote, the generalisation as 

 to the fusion of the centrosomes in conjugating cells has received several shocks before the 

 present year, in which it seems to have received its final death-blow. 



Again it seems odd that Dr. Campbell did not correct the errors which appear in the 

 explanations of Figure 163, and which are equally made in the original. Furthermore, green 

 swarm spores of algae are not usually termed Tetraspores. 



But in spite of these and similar weaknesses in the book regarded as an edition, it will 

 doubtless meet with a warm welcome as presenting to English readers the best general account 

 of the cell which has yet been written, and one, moreover, from the pen of an investigator in 

 the very front rank of cytological research. 



Protobasidiomyceten untersuchungen aus Brasilien. Von Alfred Moller, mit 6 Tafeln. 



Jena : Gustav Fischer, 1895. 



Dr. Moller is to be congratulated on having produced not only a most important work on 

 the group of fungi with which he here specially deals, but one which will be read from cover to 

 cover with ever-growing interest. The Protobasidiomycetes are here welded into a coherent 



