i897. SOME NEW BOOKS. 277 



has discharged his task. We say the author, and not the editor, for 

 the book is to all intents and purposes a new one. Nevertheless, the 

 essential character of the book has been admirably preserved, and 

 in particular the special point which renders it of such utility to the 

 medical student — the combination of histology with physiology. It 

 is, indeed, written avowedly for the use of medical students, and it 

 may safely be said that they could not easily find a work which so 

 precisely fits their special needs, though at the same time it is a 

 valuable general introduction to the subject for those who have other 

 ends in view. There is, naturally, nothing here presented which is 

 in itself novel : the book is well brought up to date, and that is 

 sufficient. Criticism resolves itself into an examination of the facts 

 selected for presentation to the student, and the mode and order of 

 their presentment. Dr. Halliburton's experience as a teacher has 

 enabled him to choose his facts judiciously and to present them 

 clearly and concisely, and if one part of the book is better than 

 another it is natural that it should be that which treats of physio- 

 logical chemistry, the subject in which his name is best known. In 

 the matter of arrangement the only doubt that arises in our minds 

 is concerning the wisdom of presenting the student so early in the 

 book with the difficult subjects of the physiology of the nervous 

 system and special senses. The illustrations are profuse and excellent, 

 and the size and compass of the work are such as to render it in 

 every way convenient. 



Scraps from Serials. 



Apropos of our Note and Comment on the alternation of generations 

 in plants, based upon Dr. Scott's address to the Botanical Section of 

 the British Association last September, it is interesting to read in 

 Nature for March 4, a paper by Sir Edward Fry on the alternations of 

 generations in plant-life, and it is also startling to learn from a foot- 

 note that the MS. of this paper " reached the hands of the Editor of 

 Nature on 31 August last year." 



Mr. F. W. Sardeson has a paper on the Galena and Maquoketa 

 series, running in the American Geologist. The second part, in the 

 February number, is devoted to an exhaustive study of the well- 

 known Ordovician and Silurian brachiopod Orthis testudinaria, the 

 American forms of which are here split up into 9 species. It is 

 hoped that this minute differentiation will throw light upon the strati- 

 fication of the beds under discussion. 



We are glad to see in the March number of Knowledge Mr. F. 

 Enock's interesting account of the life-history of the common tiger- 

 beetle, which he delivered before the Zoological Section at the Liver- 

 pool meeting of the British Association, a fact that is not stated by 

 Knowledge. The same number contains an interesting article by Dr. 

 H. R. Mill on the Victorian Era in Geography, illustrated by maps of 

 Africa in 1837 and 1897. 



The American journal of Science for March contains the conclusion 

 of Dr. Beecher's Classification of the Trilobites, with an index to the 

 genera. R. S. Tarr writes on the Arctic sea-ice as a geological 

 agent. He shows that sea-made ice protects the coast from marine 

 erosion, quite as much as, if not more than, it acts itself as an eroding 

 agent. The action of glacier ice is similarly two-fold. An enormous 

 amount of detritus is carried southwards by the arctic marine and 

 glacier ice. J. S. Diller describes and figures Crater Lake, Oregon; 

 while Messrs. F, D. Adams, A. E. Barlow and R. W. Ells describe 

 the Grenville and Hastings series in the Laurentian rocks of Canada. 



