1897] NOTES AND COMMENTS 81 
it by saying that it treats of those papers that are noted by the 
zeal of Mr J. Arthur Thomson in the first section of our own 
Zoological Record, and that the plan of the work is like that of the 
Zoologischer Jahresbericht and the Neues Jahrbuch fiir Mineralogie 
combined. There are 53 collaborators, mostly French, so that the 
task of abstracting is pretty sure to fall into competent hands. 
The want of correlation to which this leads is compensated by the 
several imtroductions as well as by special articles on general 
subjects—e.g., on grafting, by L. Daniel ; experimental knowledge of 
the correlation of animal functions, by E. Gley; on polyzoism, by 
J. P. Durand. 
As to what is meant by biology, there is always a quarrel 
simmering. It is not long since we received an elaborate discussion 
of the subject from Mr Henry de Varigny, extracted from the 
“Dictionnaire de Physiologie.” He defined it as “the science of 
the relations of organisms to the environment and to other 
organisms, present and past.” Professor Delage, in his Preface to 
the present work, does not waste much time in discussing what is 
or is not biology; for practical purposes, as a criterion of what 
shall be included in L’ Année Brologique, he accepts every paper 
that professes to give an explanation of biological phenomena (7.e., 
of the phenomena of living beings). It is easy for an analyser 
or recorder to see whether an author professes to explain. But 
Prof. Delage’ has opened a loop-hole for complaint, since he also 
promises to record facts that may be connected with some future 
explanation, or even those which “belong to general biology, and 
are not of the same nature as others already known.” Who is to 
decide what facts will ultimately be of value in the explanation of 
our ever-varying problems? ach day has its own burning ques- 
tion, casting others into the shade; and what the riddle of to- 
morrow may be we know not. Facts that were passed over a few 
years ago are all-important now. What facts shall we be collecting 
twenty years hence? But, apart from this difficulty, only to be 
overcome by a prophet, there is the certainty that hundreds of 
facts undoubtedly worthy of record from Prof. Delage’s point 
of view, will be overlooked by himself and his collaborators, It 
does not take us five minutes to discover a score of such facts, 
published during 1895, often with full knowledge of their import, 
but nowhere alluded to in this volume. We do not blame their 
omission, for we cannot think that anything else is to be expected 
on the present system of compiling bibliographies. 
Taking this work for what it really is, and not for its unattain- 
able ideal, we recognise that it is relatively complete; that it is 
well arranged and well executed, profiting by the experience of 
predecessors. It is an aid that should be neglected by none with a 
