7io SCIENCE PROGRESS 



support the view that bacteriologists who deal with diseased conditions in 

 animals and in man should be trained in veterinary medicine or in human 

 pathology. 



Thus in the preparation of bacterial vaccines it is suggested that the most 

 nu?nerous type of colony should be taken, but as most of those who have actual 

 experience with vaccines know, such a vaccine may be, and very commonly is, 

 utterly useless. The only other adverse criticism I would offer is of the Plates 

 I. to VI. I take it that these are supposed to represent models of moulds, bacteria, 

 etc., though there is no indication to this effect, but in any case they appear to me 

 to be most confusing and give a very erroneous impression. There is a useful 

 appendix, and a list of works of reference. Taken all over, the work will prove of 

 considerable value to laboratory workers, and will certainly serve to make the 

 worker more independent of his teacher— a claim which is made by the 

 authors. 



J. M. Beattie. 



Mosquitoes and Their Relation to Disease. Their Life-History, Habits, and 

 Control. By F. W. Edwards, B.A., Assistant in the Department of 

 Entomology, British Museum (Natural History). Economic Series No. 4. 

 [Pp. 19, with 6 figures.] (London : Printed by Order of the Trustees of 

 the British Museum, 1916. Price id.) 

 This pamphlet is apparently issued for the instruction of sanitary officers who 

 have to deal with mosquitoes as carriers of disease, but is little more than a 

 rechauffe of numbers of such pamphlets published during nearly twenty years 

 in many languages. We must gather from internal evidence that the work is 

 not' based upon personal sanitary experience in the field, because too much is 

 made of academical expedients such as fish and culicifuges, which generally give 

 more trouble than they are worth, while the numerous important details of 

 reduction of breeding-places are nearly all lumped together under the misleading 

 term " drainage." Nothing has been more harmful to the cause of the prevention 

 of mosquito-borne diseases in general than such academical works, because they 

 divert attention from practical ones already written. Thus, in the short biblio- 

 graphy at the end, the book on the Prevention of Malaria by twenty practical 

 workers and myself is not even mentioned ; while a work by the late Sir Rubert 

 Boyce, which was nothing but a popular exposition of my previous teaching, 

 heads the list. The author does not appear to be fully acquainted with the 

 history of the subject, for the names of Low and of James, who first indicated 

 that the filarial which cause elephantiasis enter by route of the insects' proboscis, 

 are entirely omitted from the list of workers on that subject, while the list of 

 men who connected malaria with mosquitoes is headed by the piratical Grassi 

 (see p. 669), apparently because he is a zoologist. The pamphlet is printed " By 

 Order of the Trustees of the British Museum." It would be advisable if so-called 

 scientific public bodies of this kind would take more care as to the facts before 

 giving currency to such incorrect histories of scientific work. 



R. R. 



Geodetic Surveying. By Edward R. Cary, C.E. [Pp. x + 280, with 100 



figures and illustrations and numerous tables.] (New York : John Wiley & 



Sons, Inc. ; London : Chapman & Hall, Limited, 1916. Price \os. 6d. net.) 



The author opens his work with six pages of " Introduction "—two pages of which 



are taken up by figures. In the remaining four pages the author gives in outline 



