NOTICES OF BOOKS. xliii 



least six numbers a year". The one, as we have intimated, is, and the 

 other it is promised shall be, of the nature of an Anzeiger, to contain 

 but preliminary notices and contributions of a brief and desultory 

 nature — i.e., a running record of passing investigation. We beg of the 

 promoters to adhere to their original scheme for both the contents and 

 rate of issue of these most useful publications ; and in the name of the 

 teachers in our higher colleges and of responsible heads of establish- 

 ments devoted to zoological research, who now-a-days are overwhelmed 

 in the sacrificial task of endeavouring to keep pace with current 

 literature, we exhort them to exclude lengthy dissertations, and to 

 curtail to the utmost discursive and polemical ebullitions, since, by the 

 introduction of such things, the scope of certain allied periodicals has 

 become so enlarged that their original objects have been exceeded and 

 their too rapid appearance has become a burden. And we sincerely 

 hope they will not allow their pages to be frittered away in scrappy 

 unillustrated diagnosis of new genera and species, begotten of a weak- 

 minded craving for priority, such as are at times admitted wholesale 

 into those of contemporary periodicals. 



Lehrbuch der Zoologie. Von R. Hertwig. Vierte umgearbeitete 

 Auflage. Jena : G. Fischer, 1897. 

 The present edition of this well-known work exceeds its predecessor 

 in length by but thirteen pages. The general- arrangement of its contents 

 remains unaltered, and we still meet with the insufficient treatment of the 

 vertebrata and scant}' recognition of certain invertebrata so character- 

 istic of the earlier editions. The leading modifications, as explained by 

 the author in his preface, are the reconstruction of the chapter on 

 the Sporozoa and the utilisation of Boulenger's classification of the 

 Reptilia. The former is largely associated with an incorporation of the 

 writings of Wasielewski, whose figures of Coccidiam replace those of 

 Hatschek, and from which Labbe's Hoeinaniceba Inverani varictas quav- 

 tana is adopted. The Gregarinidae are dealt with as an order of the class 

 Sporozoa; and, conversely, the Ophiuridas, in previous editions regarded 

 as an order of the class Asteroidea, are now elevated to class rank. 

 The Trilobita, hitherto with the Xiphosura and Gigantostraca dis- 

 posed of in an Anhaiig to that portion of the work devoted to the 

 Entomostraca, are now dealt with as an order of this sub-class by 

 recognition of the epoch-marking discoveries of Beecher in Triarthnis. 

 In effecting the latter radical change in his work by the incorporation 

 of irresistibly important observations in palaeontology, the author has 

 laid himself under an obligation to similarly modify other sections of it 

 which deal with groups of animals the inter-relationships of which 

 have been during recent years rendered specially clear by the dis- 

 coveries of palaeontologists. Seeking the fulfilment of this, we note 

 that the incorporation of Beecher's work is accompanied by a fuller 

 recognition of the Rhynchocephalia, but of the allied " Eotetrapoda " 

 of Credner and the wonderful series of anomodont reptiles which 

 Seeley has during the last few years described, many of them being 



