406 NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS. 



it is not surprising to find that nearly all our European forms occur off 

 the American coast. The exceptions are principally species recently 

 described from " Goldseeker " dredcfings, and usually of more or less 

 local distribution in our seas. It seems probable that these also will 

 eventually be found on the Western Atlantic shores when intensive 

 search can be made in suitable material. There is no doubt some truth 

 in Cushman's reference to the existence of groups with general as opposed 

 to local distribution, but even the nearest -species haVe a disconcerting 

 way of turning up when least expected, half a world away from any 

 previous record, and without any intermediate connecting links. 



The classification adopted by Cushman is based on the system of 

 Khumbler, and will not recommend itself to British zoologists, espe- 

 cially in present times, when everything of German origin is viewed 

 with something more than distrust. With all its defects and short- 

 comings, due largely to the limited amount of deep-sea material on which 

 he had to work, Brady's system is in our opinion more truly scientific, 

 and will hold its own, at any rate, until we know more about the life- 

 history of the deep-sea rhizopods than we are ever likely to know in the 

 immediate future. The fundamental difference between the British and 

 German schools of rhizopodists lies in the fact that the principal British 

 rhizopodists have been marine zoologists, who treated the question of 

 classification from what they knew of its biological side, while the 

 Continentals have been sytematists bent on reducing the group to hard 

 and fast specific Hues, regardless of the multiplication of genera and 

 species thereby involved in treating organisms of such simple and protean 

 structure as the Foraminifera. 



The relative merits or demerits of the two systems can be illus- 

 trated by an analysis of Cushman's last sub-family (4), Ammodiscinse. 

 This includes the genera Ammolagena Einers and Fickert = Wehbina 

 clavata (P. & J.) ; Girvanella Nicholson and Etheridge, a genus created 

 for fossil remains of doubtful nature, and used by Pthumbler for the 

 cosmopolitan Hyperammina vagans Brady. These two forms appear to 

 be very distinct from a zoological point of view, and under Brady's 

 classification are relegated to different families. But by Cushman they 

 are .associated with the true Ammodisci, and this genus, which may be 

 briefly described as an unseptate, coiled, arenaceous tube, is further sub- 

 divided. Six species, differing principally in the nature of the spiral, 

 and which would all have been included without dilficulty wwAqv Ammo- 

 disms^QU?,^ smen Brady, now require no less than four genera for their 

 reception — Anunodiscvs Reuss, Ammodiscoides Cushman, Gromospira 

 Rzchak, and Tiiritdlella Rhumbler. At this rate it will soon be a case 

 of tot genera quot species. 



There are many other points we should like to discuss in this valuable 

 monogiaph, but space will not permit. It is well illustrated by repro- 

 ductions of original figures, and for that reason it is a pity that the 

 author did not manage to include figures of all the new form's included 

 in the monograph. We trust that he will remedy this omission in a 

 supplementary paper. E. H.-A. & A. E. 



