144 NATURAL SCIENCE. Feb.. 



we find Osteokpis masquerading as Holopty chins (fig. 164), while 

 Holoptychins poses as Osteokpis (fig. 166) ; Ctenodus has lent his lower 

 jaw to Dipterus, while Coccosteus and Cephalaspis have jumped into 

 one another's shoes. It is to be hoped that no satire is meant when 

 the author ascribes all these wrong determinations to Traquair. But 

 Ammonites as well as fish have gone astray, so that on page 235 

 Schlotheimia and Arietites have changed places. Presumably Mr. 

 Priem was already engaged in further stupendous labours that 

 prevented him from seeing this work through the press. The man 

 that takes all the world as his oyster will inevitably suffer from 

 indigestion. 



F. A. B. 



Suicide and Insanity. By S. A. K. Strahan, M.D. 8vo. London : Swan 

 Sonnenschein & Co., 1893. 



This book, which Dr. Strahan calls a "Psychological and Sociological 

 study," has been written to teach a lesson and to prove a theory. 

 The lesson is one of charity and a broader sympathy with self- 

 destroyers than the Church, and consequently public opinion, inculcate. 

 The theory is one that has been gradually shaping itself in the minds 

 of thinkers and gives the lie to the formal coroner's verdict, " Suicide 

 while temporarily insane." Dr. Strahan divides suicides into two 

 classes, Rational and Irrational. To the former belong those whose 

 sanity has never been called in question. To the latter belong the 

 vast proportion of those whose deaths are daily recorded in the 

 newspapers or the registers of prisons and lunatic asylums, and are 

 attributed to mental derangement. It is this class, naturally, that is 

 subjected to physiological analysis. In a very lucid exposition of the 

 causation of suicide. Dr. Strahan proves that suicide is no more an 

 effect of insanity than are the criminal or homicidal impulse, epilepsy 

 or alcoholism, but is, with these, a special manifestation of degenerate 

 vitality of the race. In a tainted family we see, side by side with 

 insanity and epilepsy, the predisposition to suicide. Each is a 

 special form independent of the others, although a combination is 

 frequently found in the same case. Starting from the two funda- 

 mental instincts of animal life, self-preservation and procreation of 

 species. Dr. Strahan shows that voluntary death, being a confession 

 of the absence of the former of these instincts, " becomes merely one of 

 the eliminative processes of Natural Selection." In aiming at a 

 popular style, the author sometimes seems to fall below the dignity 

 of scientific dialectics. To give footnote references to well-known 

 Shakesperian quotations, for instance, lends an unpleasant suggestion 

 of amateurishness in literary work. This fault, and an unfortunate 

 misprint, ^^ aesthetics'' for ancssthetics (p. 212), it would be well to remedy 

 in a second edition. But these minor blemishes are lost in the 

 soundness of Dr. Strahan's argument and the earnestness of his 

 purpose. On the whole, his book is the most significant one yet 

 written on the subject. 



The Dispersal of Shells. By H. W. Kew, with a preface by A. R. Wallace, 



F.R.S., etc. (International Scientific Series.) London : Kegan Paul, Trubner 



and Co., 1S93. Price 5s. 



In recommending this book to the public, Mr. Wallace, in our 



opinion, says rather more than is necessary. Many books, he remarks 



