1897] SOME NEW BOOKS 269 
Norwich. The bushman who says “triantelope,” or, as we have 
heard, “triantulope” instead of turantula, is said to be “less illi- 
terate”; what particular malapropism ought we to apply to a 
scientific writer who uses such unusual spellings as “chaelae’” 
“fulchra,” “mede,” “Myrmicobius,” “vestigeal,” “synonomy,” 
“Ostraea,” “Geomiter,” “Rhoea,” and “spinnaret”? If, as our 
author might say, this sumptuously embellished volume be dedicated 
to a public with a predilection for the literary pabulum furnished by 
the now senescent lions of the Daily Telegraph, then our critical 
shafts are supererogatory. But the book deserves a higher circle of 
readers and a longer life, and therefore deserved a trifle more trouble 
in the preparation. Let Mr Saville-Kent learn, before it is too late, 
that one cannot take a snap-shot at immortality. 
THE FOSSIL-SPOTTER’S MANUAL 
Diz LerrrosstLien. Von Ernst Koken. 8vo, pp. 848, with about 900 illustrations in 
the text. Leipzig: C. H. Tauchnitz, 1896. Price, 14 marks. 
THE object of this book is not to teach palaeontology, but to present 
the geologist with a means of discovering for himself the genera to 
which his collected fossils belong; the book may be described, in 
brief, as a guide to fossil-spotting. The aim is not one with which 
we have great sympathy ; but within limits such a work is of value. 
Dr Koken will certainly have done good service if his book leads any 
geologists or others to pay more attention to the essential diagnostic 
characters of genera and species, as detailed by their authors in the 
text of their monographs, and to rely less on the superficial features 
shown in the illustrations, which, as every worker knows, are often 
incorrect. 
The book is professedly incomplete, dealing as it does only with 
Invertebrata, and omitting even from them such forms as are not of 
much use to the stratigrapher. All the Tertiary species, too, find no 
place in the second half of the book, although the more important 
genera are discussed in the systematic section. The illustrations also 
though many are good, are very unevenly distributed. A book of 
this kind needs more diagrams, such as those of Cardinia (p. 200), 
Megalodon (p. 205), goniatite suture-lines (pp. 60, 61), and trilobites 
(p. 18), and can well spare elaborate pictures, such as that of the rare 
Silurian Pollicipes (p. 6, or the uninstructive Polyjerea (p. 332). 
Illustrations that suited Dr Koken’s excellent semi-popular work 
“Die Vorwelt” (see Natural Science, vi., pp. 127-129, Feb. 1895) 
are not adapted to the present student’s manual, however much the 
publisher may wish to utilise old clichés. 
The first part of the book consists of a series of analytical keys, 
arranged in the form of short paragraphs, each connected by reference 
numbers with those that follow. It is an attempt to reduce dicho- 
tomous tables to the requirements of the printed page, and is at first 
somewhat perplexing. Let us try it in practice. Here is a small 
brachiopod from the Upper Chalk. Section I. is “ without hinge” ; 
this has a hinge: turn to section IJ. II. A. are forms without free 
