i893- SOME NEW BOOKS. 463 



Rule of Thumb Guide to Invertebrate Zoology for the use of Exami- 

 nation Candidates in Geology, we should have had nothing to say 

 against it. All that those gentlemen want is to be able to spot their 

 fossils with a minimum of trouble and a maximum [?] of certainty ; 

 they reck naught of morphological niceties so long as they can " pip 

 the examiner." To this goal Mr. Woods will prove an excellent 

 guide, and that his goal is no nobler one is probably deplored as much 

 by himself as it is by us. As to our own ideal, the curious— if such there 

 be — will find it in Natural Science, vol. ii., p. 307. 



We would willingly leave the book here, but as it is the first of a 

 series issued under the auspices of no less a body than Cambridge 

 University, it is only due to the Editor and his co-labourers that we 

 should treat it with some seriousness. We hope, in the first place, 

 that the other writers of elementary manuals will not use quite so 

 many long words, at all events, without explaining them. Here the 

 terms ''isotropic silica " (p. 3), "optically biaxial" (p. 4), " siphonos- 

 tomatous " (p. 10), " phylogeny " (p. 11), would make the ordinary 

 undergraduate throw the book out of the window before he had 

 finished the introduction. To judge from his definition of the Fora- 

 minifera, Mr. Woods has never heard of the student who was brought 

 to a stand by a similar one. When his teacher said, " I suppose you 

 don't know the meaning of arenaceous," he proudly replied, " Oh ! yes. 

 I have heard of arenaceous foods." 



There is, as we have implied, far too much Zoology for a book 

 that calls itself a " Palaeontology." Under no circumstances can a 

 palaeontologist as such, much less a geologist, want to know anything 

 about the nervous system of the Bryozoa or the renal organs of the 

 Mollusca. The compilers of Zoological text-books have a right to 

 prosecute Mr. Woods for poaching on their preserves. 



The absence of finished pictures of specimens is a commendable 

 feature, for such only help the lazy reader. Other writers in the 

 series will do well to follow Mr. Woods' example, but it is to be 

 hoped they will steer clear of his occasional habit of using a plural 

 nominative with a single verb, e.g., " The Porifera includes the 

 Sponges." It would also have been an improvement had the name of 

 some typical species, not necessarily the type species, been added to 

 the descriptions of the genera. In the present state of Brachiopod 

 nomenclature, for instance, it will take the student a few hours to 

 determine what the author means by Stvophomena and Leptuna 

 respectively. 



It is a pleasure to find the Pteropods at last removed from the 

 Cephalopods to the Gastropods ; but the account of the Cephalopodsis 

 no great advance on that of previous text-books. It is all very well 

 for a teacher to be conservative ; but there does come a time when 

 one must either " mend or end." "The species of Ammonites . . . . 

 differ so much from one another that they are now regarded as 



representing many distinct genera But in an elementary 



work like the present it will be convenient to retain the old genus 

 Ammonites." Long may the good old genus Ammonites remain — in our 

 text-books ! Seriously, what would Mr. Woods or anyone else think, 

 if a writer were to substitute the word Encrinus for Ammonites in the 

 above quotation ? Anyhow, it is worse than absurd, after disposing of 

 the various Families, not merely Genera, of Ammonitinae in this 

 manner, to devote a whole page to descriptions of the uncoiled 

 Cretaceous forms, which are not genera at all. 



Ammonites is described as "possessing two pairs of gills, two 



