CARPENTER^ ON FORAMINIFERA. 301 



volume before us^ as it presents an amount of detailed labour 

 unrivalled for its extent and minuteness in the family to 

 which it is devoted. However much Dr. Carpenter's views 

 on the nature and limits of species may be open to criti- 

 cism — and our pages are not the place for this purpose — 

 no one can complain of any deficiency of illustration. 

 The work is illustrated with twenty-two plates, containing 

 upwards of three hundred figures, and the text contains 

 upwards of forty woodcuts. We need not say that such a 

 work has especial claims on the microscopic observer, for 

 altliough the forms of the Foraminifera are most of them 

 visible to the naked eye, it is only as microscopic organisms 

 that they possess interest in the eye of the naturalist. Just 

 as the microscope has been improved in its structure, and its 

 uses understood, has this family been studied, and its im- 

 portance recognised in the scale of created beings. In fact, 

 through the researches of Williamson and Carpenter, and their 

 coadjutors, this family of Foraminifera invite attention, as 

 aifordiug a means of studying those great laws of morpho- 

 logy and the origin of species, which at the present moment 

 are attracting so much attention alike from the philosophic 

 naturalist and the patient student of specific forms. 



