T9II. Revieiv. 75 



REVIEW. 



ZOOLOGY FOR STUDENTS. 



Outlines of Zoology. By J. Arthur Thomson, M.A. Fifth Edition. 

 Pp. xxii. + 856, with 420 ilhistrations. Edinburgh and London : 

 Henry Frowde and Hodder and Stoughton, 1910. Price 155. 



It is four and a half years since the 4th edition of " Thomson " was 

 reviewed in the Irish Naturalist (vol. xv., p. 230). The issue now before 

 us appears under the auspices of a new publisher, and though the size 

 of the book has not been increased, the use of a new fount of type, slightly 

 smaller than that of former editions, but still beautifully clear, has rendered 

 possible the inclusion of much new matter. For example we now find 

 Lister's observations on the reproduction of Polystomella described and 

 illustrated (though the microspheric form is erroneously stated to have 

 a large central chamber) ; figures of antipatharian structure are given ; 

 there are diagrams of Ctenophora and of Ai^enicola : good pictures of 

 Lxodes and other Acarinida are welcome to the economic zoologist ; the 

 account of Cephalodiscus is illustrated by two figures after Ridewood. 

 In the sections on the Vertebrata the account of the pineal and associated 

 structures has been revised in the light of the recent work of Dendy and 

 others, while the systematic survey of the Mammalia is now well up to 

 the present stage of knowledge. 



Altogether the new edition is considerably more valuable than the 

 fourth, excellent as that was, and the reviewer, though he could find 

 statements to question here and there would do better to learn from the 

 author some principles of successful book-writing. He would only suggest 

 that in the sixth edition (may it be called for soon !) the chapters on the 

 factors of evolution should be extended to twice their present size. 

 Because the controversial questions grow more involved and difficult as 

 time goes on, the elementary student needs increasingly a fuller discussion 

 of them. 



G. H. C. 



NOTES, 



ZOOLOGY. 



Paromola Cuvieri oif South-west Ireland. 



It may be of interest to record the fact that the British Museum has 

 recently received, by the kindness of Mr. H. Bolton, Curator of the Bristol 

 Museum, one of two specimens of this very striking crab, which were 

 got by a trawler "about 235 miles west of Milford in 160 fathoms of 

 water " on a bottom of oozy mud and sand. The species was 

 recorded from south-west Ireland in 1908 by J. N. Halbert {Irish Nat., 

 xvii., p. 129), and later by Mr. James Ritchie from off the north-west 

 of Scotland {Ann. Scott. Nat. Hist. 19 10, p. 12). 



W. T. Calman. 

 British Museum (Nat. History), Loudon, S.W. 



