1896. SOME NEW BOOKS. 123 



the series. Mr. Sedgwick could not fail to succeed in the first ; it is 

 all the more to be regretted that the structural and developmental 

 characters which make Pcripatus a type of such high interest to the 

 zoologist have not been set forth so as to appeal to the common man. 

 The paragraph in which Mr. Sedgwick dwells on the external beauty 

 of a living Pcripatus with its "velvety skin," and " eyes sparkling like 

 diamonds," shows that he could have told with equal plainness and 

 enthusiasm, had he taken the trouble to do it, the internal history 

 which he has so ably read. 



To the account of Pcripatus is appended a synopsis of the species. 

 This can only be of use to the systematic naturalist. When this 

 despised person studies it, he will marvel that three men of the 

 scientific standing of Messrs. Shipley, Harmer, and Sedgwick could 

 have sent forth such a piece of work. Not even a footnote calls 

 attention to Mr. Pocock's opinion (published July, 1894) that the 

 Neotropical, Ethiopian, and Australian sections of Peripatus are fully 

 worthy of generic distinction. The names of all the authors of species 

 are put in brackets ; as if they had referred the forms they described 

 to some other genus. Mr. W. L. Sclater is credited with a name 

 (P. demeravanus) which Mr. Sedgwick himself needlessly coined to super- 

 sede Mr. Sclater's name for the Guiana species ; while the name 

 P. chiliensis, ascribed by Mr. Sedgwick to Gay, is another gratuitous 

 synonym of his own for the species which Gay and Blanchard called 

 P. blainvillei. Mr. Dendy's Victorian species, P. insignis, is not 

 mentioned at all. P. iuliformis, Guilding, and the Pevipati from 

 Jamaica and Dominica are inserted among the "doubtful" species, 

 though all three have been recently described in sufficient detail by- 

 Messrs. Grabham, Cockerell, Pollard, and Pocock. Lastly, P. trini- 

 dadensis is notified as a "n.sp."; it was described by Mr. Sedgwick 

 himself in 1888. This last marvel gives the clue to the whole per- 

 formance ; the synopsis has been exactly reprinted from Mr. Sedgwick's 

 monograph, now seven years old ! To point out such slovenly com- 

 pilation as this is condemnation enough. 



Mr. Sinclair's chapter on the Myriapoda is a very uneven piece 

 of work. It is written in a style well calculated to allure the reader to 

 the study of those animals, often thought repulsive and uninteresting. 

 In the introduction the author gives a general account of the aspect, 

 habits, feeding, and breeding of the myriapods, incorporating many 

 personal observations ; he also discusses the popular names in use for 

 the creatures. Then follows a section on the classification of myriapods, 

 which can only be described as inexcusably antiquated, especially as 

 Mr. Sinclair seems deliberately to have chosen to make it so. He 

 implies that Koch and Latzel are the only writers who have treated 

 of the myriapods as a whole ; Messrs. Pocock and Bollman are pre- 

 sumably included among "the many authors who have done excellent 

 work on different groups and families," work which Mr. Sinclair 

 "does not wish for a moment to undervalue." Then why does he 

 utterly ignore it, when both those writers — in English — have treated 

 the group as a whole, and in a masterly way ? But if Mr. Sinclair 

 turns from Pocock and Bollman, surely he will consent to be guided 

 by Latzel ? No, " on the whole, he thinks it will be better to take 

 the classification of Koch," though the works of that author are 

 " comparatively old," one only thirty and the other fifty years. And 

 so the reader is presented with a scheme the diagnostic statements of 

 which bristle with errors. The genital ducts of millipedes are said to 

 open on the seventh segment (instead of the third, as Mr. Sinclair 

 correctly states in his anatomical section). The Callipodida- and 



K 2 



