1899] PRACTICAL ZOOLOGY 145 
the position of the species under investigation, but of course not intended to 
supplant the ordinary text-book of systematic zoology. The study is divided 
into twenty lessons, and at the beginning of each is a short statement of the 
material and reagents required, followed by a general account of the Class or 
Order. The directions for the actual dissection and demonstration are clear 
and straightforward, and are elucidated by a number of figures. Of these 
illustrations many are original, and due either to the author or to his pupils, 
Messrs. Th. Krumbach and A. Giltsch. Others are borrowed, and we are glad 
to note that the original source is given with accuracy; but is not “ Fig. 95. 
Organisation von Holothuria tubulosa (aus Lang)” really copied from Milne 
Edwards and Carus? The drawings are good, they will help to sell the book, 
and the beginner will be grateful for them. None the less, they may tempt 
the student to adopt the easier course of lifting them into his note-book instead 
of drawing from the object before him. And is it not a good training for the 
student to direct him to the original monographs, and to let him copy the 
figures (if he does it at all) from the first source of each? There is little in 
this book to lead the student on, or to disabuse him of the notion that, when he 
has worked through what is here, he will have as thorough acquaintance with 
the various types as is needful. The course is professedly an elementary one, 
and little attention is paid to other methods than those of dissection with 
scalpel and needle. But even so, it is startling to find Sepia taken as the type 
of a Cephalopod, and yet no description given of the cuttle-bone. 
There are so many good books of the kind nowadays, that this one by 
Professor Kukenthal is not likely to find a large sale outside Germany, even if 
translated. But it can be recommended as accurate, clear, and adapted to the 
somewhat narrow limits of an elementary course. As B, 
MONTH BY MONTH. 
Rambles with Nature Students. By ExizA BricHTwEn, F.E.S. Pp. 221, 
with many illustrations. London: Religious Tract Society, 1899. 
Mrs. Brightwen has published another of her delightful little books of talk 
about common things. The present volume contains six or seven short chapters 
for each month, and with just a little help from the treasures of her museum 
in the barest months the authoress contrives to find interesting subjects 
throughout the year. In the dull days she gives us pretty and well-illustrated 
studies of ice-crystals, footprints in the snow, skeleton leaves, birds’ feet and 
skulls, ventriculites, and various other matters. During the brighter months 
she writes simply and clearly of many familiar insects and flowers, and of some, 
too, like those in her chapter on “‘ Hidden Lives,” that are known only to those 
whose eyes have been trained to see. Her descriptions are always vivid and 
interesting, and the practical directions frequently given are clear and simple. 
Her new book will prove not only helpful and stimulating to those who have 
already done some work for themselves, but will also be a most comforting 
guide for such easily-discouraged little people as the twelve-year-old, who 
abandoned the study of natural history because, as she plaintively said, the 
beasts never had any habits when she was watching them. 
The naturalist’s delight in living things for their own sake by no means 
obscures Mrs. Brightwen’s keen appreciation of their practical aspects. Thus 
we may learn from her chapter on the development of flies what precautions 
should be taken to protect our meat from bluebottles, from the life-story of the 
meal-worm how to keep up an unfailing supply of animal food for our cage 
birds, and she tells us, too, that a tonic beverage may be made from acorn- 
kernels, and that she was able to express from a fungus, the “ maned agaric,” 
a serviceable ink whose qualities were unimpaired after eleven years. The 
ingenious way in which, by a process of pith-slicing and repeated ironing, she 
10—wnar. sc.—vou. xv. No. 90. 
