REVIEWS sor 



an almost unbelievable degree of complexity, yet its limit can be reached, and,, 

 when faced with a problem outside that provided for by instinct and requiring 

 only a modicum of reason, the insect fails completely. A more miserable failure 

 to solve a simple problem than that instanced in the case of the caterpillar of the 

 pine processionary moth it would be difficult to imagine. 



Throughout the book the reader's attention is closely held, although, perhaps, 

 the chapters on the smia are a little drawn out, and, in order to press a point, 

 an important one, there is rather too much repetition. It must be added that this 

 is in no way due to the translators, who have retained the letter and, what is more 

 remarkable, the spirit of the original text with striking fidelity. A translator's 

 note on p. 21 states that the Zoophytes include "Starfish, Jellyfish, Sea-anemones, 

 and Sponges," whereas it was a term originally used to include Sponges, Hydroid 

 Ccelenterates, and Polyzoa. 



Written in a style that is as remote from the "dry as dust" manner only too 

 often adopted by scientific writers as can well be imagined, and yet containing a 

 wealth of facts for Biologist, Naturalist, and comparative Psychologist, the book 

 should be assured of a wide circulation. The translators have laid the reading 

 public under another debt in providing a further instalment of the works of one 

 of the greatest students of insect life in the last half of the nineteenth century. 



C H. O'D. 



Principles of General Physiology. By William Maddock Bayliss, M.A., 

 D.Sc, F.R.S., Professor of General Physiology in University College, 

 London. 2nd edition, revised. [Pp. xxiv + 858, with 261 illustrations.] 

 (London : Longmans, Green & Co., 1918. Price 24^. net.) 



Prof. Bayliss' Principles of General Physiology is peculiarly difficult to review. 

 Its title does not convey its contents ; it contains a great deal that is not General 

 Physiology. For so wide a range it would be hard to find a title much more 

 precise than " Leaves from my Notebooks." Moreover, these leaves are of 

 exceptional value, and have met with very cordial appreciation, which has cul- 

 minated in the call for a second edition within two years. 



The earlier chapters deal with Protoplasm and its environment. It is here 

 that the principles of General Physiology are most obvious ; and here that 

 Prof. Bayliss is at his best. Tiie later chapters form a less coherent chain of 

 particulars and generalities, less well arranged, and treated, for the most part, in 

 less detail. 



Prof. Bayliss has, naturally, given prominence to recent work from the 

 laboratory with which he is associated. He has done this very fully — so much 

 to the omission, or disparagement, of other work as to diminish, in some cases, 

 the value of his presentation. Waller is omitted, completely, from the account 

 of the electrocardiogram ; Gotch from that of the knee-jerk ; and Mrs. Tribe 

 (who anticipated Fiihner and Starling) from that of the pulmonary vasomotors. 

 Locke and Rosenheim's work on the consumption of dextrose by the heart 

 is most unfairly represented on p. 449. The Bibliography, though very full, 

 contains no reference to Dastre, to Luciani, to Popielski, to Rubner, or to 

 Swale Vincent. Surprising, again, is the treatment of Ringer. Although a 

 portrait of Ringer is given and his work described as of fundamental importance, 

 this work is dismissed with a brief and bald account of some of its details without 

 any adequate reference to the principles that Ringer established. If this is the 



