348 NATURAL SCIENCE [November 
skeletons are based upon personal observation and research, while the 
clear diagrammatic illustrations are nearly all refreshingly new, many 
of them taken from the beautiful preparations in the central hall of 
the British Museum (Natural History), others from specimens in the 
Cambridge University Museum of Zoology. 
The plan adopted by the author is to give first an account of the 
general skeletal characters of the group of which he is treating, with 
the characters of its several sub-divisions; secondly, to describe in 
detail the skeleton of one or more selected types ; and thirdly, to treat 
the skeleton as developed in the group in question, organ by organ. 
The account of each type skeleton is made complete in itself, so that 
the elementary student can, if he wishes, use the book merely as 
a laboratory guide to the few leading forms of skeleton to which he 
ordinarily confines his attention. 
The author is, of course, a teacher, and he presumably knows the 
requirements of his students; but we are inclined to think that the 
handbook he has produced is far from well-arranged for practical 
purposes. The information is admirable, usually up-to-date, and not 
often faulty—though a work of such wide scope must necessarily have 
its imperfections ; but there are endless repetitions as we turn over the 
pages, the facts concerning a single structure or phenomenon are some- 
times inconveniently scattered, and there is a lack of some fundamental 
idea to unite the various parts of the work into one harmonious whole. 
The facts of embryology may sometimes be of doubtful import, and 
our present knowledge of palaeontology may encourage many fanciful 
notions and speculations. But if both these aids to formulating a 
scheme be rejected, there is still the good old-fashioned method of 
Comparative Anatomy, which (in our opinion, at least) is more useful 
for teaching purposes than the disconnected mode of treatment in the 
handbook before us. We have noted similar want of coherence in 
Cambridge biological teaching before. Since the days of Francis 
Maitland Balfour, the philosophy of the subject seems to have become 
gradually neglected, while the dry facts have been more and more 
constantly presented in unattractive array. Mr Reynolds is likely to 
have the opportunity of revising his manual in a new edition very 
soon—for it fills a decided gap, and will be helpful to many who have 
hitherto been compelled to turn to numerous and varied abstruse 
treatises for guidance. We would therefore urge him to consider 
these important points, and render his work more worthy of the great 
labour he must have bestowed upon it. 
Two New EDITIONS 
Lessons IN Evementary Brotocy. By T. Jeffrey Parker. Third edition. S8vyo, pp. 
an ha with 127 illustrations. London: Macmillan & Co., 1897. Price, 
10s. 6d. 
ELEMENTS OF THE CoMPARATIVE ANATOMY OF VERTEBRATES. Adapted from the 
German of Dr Robert Wiedersheim. By W. N. Parker. Second edition, founded 
on the third German edition. 8vo, pp. xvi. 488, with 333 illustrations. London: 
Macmillan & Co., 1897. Price, 12s. 6d. net. 
THESE two text-books by the brothers Parker are too well known and 
widely appreciated to need any recommendation here. It suffices to 
record the publication of a new and revised edition of each of them. 
