NOTICES OF BOOKS. xli 



abandoned, to be replaced by one which seeks to unveil the causes 

 which have operated on the plastic vegetable protoplasm and have re- 

 sulted in the production of the manifold forms of the plant world around 

 us. The writer is peculiarly well fitted for his task in-as-much as he 

 has been himself one of the foremost investigators in this field. Prof. 

 Goebel holds strongly that metamorphosis of a primitive structure is due 

 to a change of function and hence it is useless to attempt to frame a 

 scientific morphology without paying due regard to physiological circum- 

 stances. 



The chapter on concrescence and abortion is very interesting as a 

 summary of striking examples illustrating the author's standpoint. 



Differentiation of form might however be conceivably due to an 

 initial change taking place in the essential protoplasmic element- 

 idioplasm or whatever else we call it — which results in a diverse re- 

 sponse to a similar environment, and then selection would operate in 

 eliminating the unfit and the less fit, so that finally only those forms 

 would survive which were capable of suitably responding to the exi- 

 gencies of their surroundings. 



The sections treating of relations of symmetry and of the variations 

 in the development of organs at different periods are for the most part 

 based on the previous writings of the author, but nevertheless they have 

 gained much from the way in which they are handled in their present 

 form. 



It is however surprising to find the old hypothesis of " stoff und 

 form " revived in its crudest form on page 38. This hypothesis merely 

 restates the problems to be solved in terms of substances as to the 

 nature and even the existence of which we are entirely ignorant, and it 

 only obscures the whole matter instead of clearing it up, to conjure with 

 such figments of the imagination. But apart from this and a few other 

 passages the book is an admirable one, and it would be ungracious to 

 find too much fault on these grounds with a book so full of interesting 

 matter that one does not want to lay it down till the last page is reached. 



Outlines of Vertebrate Palceontology, for Students of Zoology. By A. 

 Smith Woodward. Cambrfdge : University Press, 1898. (Cam- 

 bridge Natural Science Manuals, Biological Series.) 



This volume of 459 pages, with over 200 admirable illustrations, is 

 most welcome, and we congratulate both the author and editors upon it. 

 Palaeontology, and that more especially of the vertebrata, has of late 

 years been sorely neglected by a large section of our younger teachers 

 and students. The intensity of comparative embryological research and 

 a far too predominant pursuit of the " Schnitt Serie " method, together 

 with other modes of investigation which favour broad generalisation, 

 have almost blinded them to the more solid and tangible truths which 

 lie buried in the rocks. And this movement has gone so far that there 

 have not been wanting those who would not even admit it a branch 



