XLVi SCIENCE PROGRESS. 



last fifteen years has been systematically taken in hand by British 

 workers, and in bringing together the sum of our knowledge concerning 

 these this book marks an epoch in the advancement and popularisation of 

 practical fishery affairs. Its only compeer of English origin is Cunning- 

 ham's Marketable Marine Food-Fishes. It, however, transcends that, 

 and on perusing it we confess to a feeling of pride in the amount that 

 is really known and experimentally established, and of profound grati- 

 tude to all connected with St. Andrews for their noble share in the work. 

 The book has further a special interest since it is the first important 

 publication which has emanated from the Gattv Laborator}' of the Uni- 

 versity of St. Andrews, over which Professor Mcintosh presides. The pre- 

 sentation of this building as a mark of appreciation of its directors 

 epoch-marking labours in Marine Zoology is a matter of such recent 

 history that it calls for no comment here, except to say that it marks an 

 event upon which he and his ancient University are to be heartih- con- 

 gratulated. Professor Mcintosh will be remembered in history as a 

 pioneer in the application of Zoology to fishery affairs. The work of St. 

 Andrews, with which his name and the volume under review will be 

 ever associated, stands alone; it has been done on slender means, 

 against considerable odds, and even now that in the establishment of 

 the Gatty Laboratory it has received such deserving recognition from 

 a private source, the miserable pittance allotted it under the Fishery 

 Board for Scotland has ceased. Although the bulk of the observations 

 set forth in the present volume have been made at St. Andrews, among 

 leading investigators whose names occur in the text are Brook, Cun- 

 ningham, Dunn, Fulton, Green, Haddon and Holt, than whom none 

 have during recent years done more by honest labor to advance our 

 knowledge of British Marine Fishes. The work of not a few foreign 

 contemporaries of necessity comes in for recognition — Agassiz, Whit- 

 man, Dannevig, Mobius, Petersen, Sars — and the English Zoologist 

 asked to recommend a series of reliable drawings extending to the 

 later stages of development of the Plaice and Flounder is no longer 

 under the humiliating necessity of referring his applicant to them 

 and them alone. The weakest portion of the book is that dealing with 

 organology and embryological detail. For want of better illustration 

 a great deal of this will miss fire with the general public, to whom the 

 usage of terms such as " periblast " and " intermediate cell mass," 

 without sufficient definition, can convey little idea. Gross errors we 

 have not detected, but among interesting topics of far-reaching im- 

 portance we could have wished a record of the presence of one or more 

 spiny rays in the anterior dorsal fin of the Hake ; while further details 

 concerning the appearance of similar structures, of cephalic spines, and 

 the development of an air-bladder, among young Pleuronectids, and a 

 mention of the existence, symmetry, and habits o{ Psettodes would not 

 have been amiss. Fuller recognition might have been granted the investi- 

 gations of Mobius concerning the renal origin of the thread of the Stickle- 

 back's nest, so interestingly associated with the contemporary researches 

 of Prince ; and a fuller account of the spawning act of the male herring 



