XLiv SCIENCE PROGRESS. 



annectant forms the importance of a knowledge of which is to the 

 elementar}- student at least as great as that of Triarthnis, we 

 find no mention. Nor is the palaeontological portion of the book 

 alone thus weak and behind the times. Two and a half years have 

 elapsed since the publication of the previous edition of the work, and 

 during that period it has been discovered that some Marsupials develop 

 an allantoic placenta; and in Anaspides tasmanice there has been 

 described a living Crustacean combining characters diagnostic of the 

 Amphipods, Schizopods, and Decapods. Half a dozen investigators 

 have during the period radically revolutionised our knowledge of the 

 tooth-genesis of the Marsupialia ; but of these and numerous other 

 topics which, like them, are landmarks of contemporary investigation 

 that have necessitated a reconsideration of first principles of classifica- 

 tion and of our accepted views of phylogeny and structural relationship, 

 we find no mention in the book. The remarkable treatment of the 

 Bryozoa, Brachiopoda, and Tunicata, upon which we have previously 

 commented, is still persisted in ; and we would again point out that 

 Rliahdoplcura and Ccplialodiscns are important forms which should be 

 made known to even the elementary student, while annectant types 

 such as Acinetoides among Protozoa and the Nothosauria among 

 reptiles might well have been alluded to, when, on the author's own show- 

 ing, pages dealing with the Protozoa and Reptilia have been materially 

 rearranged. When we consider that the accumulation of zoological 

 literature during the last twenty to thirty years has been of a phenom- 

 enal order, unparalleled by that of any other branch of science, and the 

 consequent colossal nature of the task of compiling a text-book of the 

 subject, we feel profoundly grateful to the author of the present work 

 for what he has done. His book, however, good and sound so far as it 

 goes, is thin, and we would have more of it, while more and better 

 illustrations are sorely needed to do even justice to the text. Beyond 

 the new illustrations already alluded to and some trivial modifications 

 in others, there is introduced in the present edition but a drawing of a 

 bird's skull. The replacement of Leuckart's time-honoured figure of 

 Distoimiui hceiuatobiuin by a far better, delineating with some degree of 

 clearness the remarkable relationships of the female to the canalis 

 gynascophorus of the male, is indicative of promise for the future, for 

 in the reproduction ad iiaiiseain of antiquated illustrations our current 

 text-books of zoolog}' are not to be beaten. 



The Life-Histories of the British Marine Food-Fishes. By W. C. 



Mcintosh, F.R.S., and A. T. Masterman, B.A., B.Sc. London: 



C. J. Clay & Sons, 1897. 

 This volume of 467 pages is very welcome, and comes as the realisa- 

 tion of a long-cherished desire of all interested in fisheries work in 

 Great Britain. It is defined by its authors as '" a popularised epitome of 

 the results achieved by British and foreign scientific workers at the St. 

 Andrews Marine Laboratory and elsewhere ". All our commercially im- 

 portant fishes, with other species to the total number of nearly ninety, 



