42 



THE NATUEAL HISTORY EEYIEW, 



the general classification put forward in the work before us, chiefly 

 with the purpose of indicating to our readers those particulars in 

 which it departs more or less from w^hat we believe to be the generally 

 received views of Zoologists. That the system adopted is open to 

 certain objections there can be no doubt, and the more prominent of 

 these have been indicated to the best of our power in the preceding 

 pages, but on the whole the work appears to be the best and most 

 complete Manual of Systematic Zoology that has yet appeared. As a 

 guide to classification it is superior to the excellent Handbook of 

 Vander Hoeven, although it is inferior to that work in copiousness 

 of detail as to the general organisation and developmental phenomena 

 of the various groups. The great space devoted to the generic 

 analysis has necessarily compelled the authors to compress what they 

 had to say upon these subjects into a comparatively small compass, 

 but what they do give is exceedingly good, and has evidently been 

 prepared with a thorough appreciation of the most recent investiga- 

 tions into the various departments of Zoology. 



VII. — Phipson's Phosphobescence. 



Phosphorescence; or, the Emission of Light by Minerals, 

 Plants, and Animals. By T. L. Phipson, Ph.D., P.C.S. Lon- 

 don : Lovell Reeve, and Co. 1862. 



Towards the close of the eighteenth century, in a narrow winding 

 street of the old town of Bologna, a cobbler — Yincenzo Cascariolo 

 by name— might have been found, more intent on the pursuit of 

 alchemy than in making or repairing boots. While enjoying a w^alk 

 one Sunday evening, near the Monte Paterno, not far from the city, 

 he picked up a stone, w^hich, from its great weight, struck him as 

 peculiar, and from which he fancied he could extract gold. This 

 stone was sulphate of Baryta, which Cascariolo, heating in his crucible 

 with charcoal, converted into a sulphuret of Barium, and produced 

 a body well known for its strange property of giving out light after 

 it has been exposed for some time to the Sun's rays. Since then, other 

 substances have been discovered endowed with this strange property, 

 and from the most remarkable of them, phosphorus, the name of 

 phosphorescence, is derived. This phosphorescence is not, however, 

 confined to the mineral kingdom ; but, on the contrary, some of the 

 most remarkable instances of this phenomenon are found in many of 



