158 Reviews and Notices oj Booh, 



look upon these affairs with the most stoical composure. Were 

 they in my position, they would soon feel their magnanimity very 

 sensibly diminished, and rapidly oozing away from them. For 

 the last four years I have been subjected to great annoyance in 

 consequence of Prof. Hall's extraordinary practice of antedating 

 his publications, and I have a perfect right, and shall not hesitate 

 on every occasion, to resist in the most public manner. 



E. Billings. 

 Montreal April 15, 1862. 



REVIEWS AND NOTICES OF BOOKS. 



A Manual of the Sub-Kingdom Ccelenterata. By Joseph Reay 

 Greene, B.A., Professor of Natural History in the Queen's 

 College, Cork. London, 1861. Longman & Co. 12 mo, 

 pp. 271. 

 *"The author of this work is already favourably known by his 

 " Manual of Protozoa," with a general introduction on the Prin- 

 ciples of Zoology — which is an excellent text-book for students. 

 The present volume is an abiidgraent of a larger work, which the 

 author hopes ere long to publish. The Ccelenterata include such 

 animals as the Hydra, Sertularia, Medusa, Actinia, and Zoophyte. 

 They are all furnished with an alimentary canal, freely communi- 

 catino- with the general or somatic cavity. The substance of the 

 body consists essentially of two separate layers; an outer, or ec- 

 toderm, and an inner, or endoderm. These two membranes, but 

 especially the former, are in general provided with ciliae. In the 

 integument of those organisms we constantly meet with peculiar 

 thread-cells, which, when they come into contact with the human 

 skin, frequently produce disagreeable stinging sensations. The 

 sub-kingdom is divided into two orders : — 1. Hydrozoa^ixi which 

 the wall of the digestive sac is not separated from that of the so- 

 matic cavity, and the reproductive organs are external ; 2. Acti- 

 nozoa, in which the wall of the digestive sac is separated from 

 that of the somatic cavity by an intervening space, subdivided in- 

 to chambers by a series of vertical partitions, iu the faces of which 

 the reproductive organs are developed. The author gives the 

 morphology, physiology, classification, and distribution as regards 

 space and time, of the animals included in these two orders. 

 The facts are stated in a clear and interesting manner, and are 



