SOME NEW BOOKS. 



The Macleay Memorial Volume, edited by J. J. Fletcher. Published by the 

 Linnean Society of New South Wales. Pp. Hi. and 308, frontispiece, and 42 

 plates. 4to. Sydney and London : Dulau & Co., 1893. Price 3 guineas. 



Sir William Macleay, who died on December 7, 1891, in his 

 seventy-second year, was pre-eminently the patron of Natural Science 

 in Australia. To his efforts were largely due the foundation and 

 continuance of the Linnean Society of New South Wales, and to 

 commemorate his munificence that Society now issues the present 

 handsome volume, to which naturalists from various parts of 

 Australia and New Zealand contribute a somewhat heterogeneous 

 assemblage of articles of very various value. 



The editor, Mr. J. J. Fletcher, prefaces the volume with an 

 interesting account of the Macleays, and especially the eponymous 

 William. As characteristic both of the man and of his biographer's 

 literary style, the following description of an encounter with outlaws 

 in 1864 may be quoted : — " His courageous conduct on this occasion 

 and his commendable example in successfully asserting, rifle in hand, 

 his right to travel on the high road when three desperate ruffians, 

 Gilbert, Hall, and Dunn, one of them a recent murderer of police, 

 held possession of it on the hill overlooking the inn, and having just 

 finished with the Goulburn coach were actively engaged in the process 

 of ' sticking-up ' several teams and a number of travellers when Sir 

 William, accompanied only by a boy who was driving the buggy, came 

 on the scene and raised the siege, afterwards received official recog- 

 nition by his being chosen one of seven gentlemen to whom in 1875 

 the Government awarded gold medals ' granted for gallant and 

 faithful services ' rendered during the period when bushranging was 

 rife." 



Professor W. B . Spencer contributes to our knowledge of Ceratodtis a 

 very thorough account of the blood-vessels of that interesting lung- 

 bearing fish. He finds that both veins and arteries, while showing 

 unmistakable connection with primitive shark-like types, have 

 developed to a certain extent along lines parallel to those of amphi- 

 bians. He considers that in the earliest forms in which lungs were 

 developed for respiration, the mode of life was very similar to that of 

 Ceratodus. The animal lived in water, and, at first at any rate and 

 possibly for long, the lungs were only accessory to the gills. This 

 condition is paralleled in the early life of the frog. In Ceratodus the 

 lung is always in use, although the animal does not, as some have 

 supposed, emerge from the water ; but this organ is chiefly of 

 service when the river water is thickly charged with sand or 

 fouled by decomposing vegetation. The paper is illustrated by five 

 plates in Mr. Spencer's admirably clear, though somewhat over- 

 diagrammatic, style. 



Captain F. W. Hutton follows with a systematic account of the 

 Pliocene Mollusca of New Zealand, which he characterises as " the 



