248 
REVIEWS. 
Evenings at the Microscope ; or, Researches among the Minuter 
Organs and Forms of Animal Life. By Puiir Henry 
Gosss, F.R.S. London: Society for Promoting Christian 
Knowledge. 
Ir is always a pleasant thing to meet Mr. Gosse in print, 
whether he ushers himself into the world from the Red Lion 
press in Paternoster Row, or obtains the sanction of “ the 
Committee of General Literature and Education appointed 
by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.” Why 
Mr. Gosse publishes his books under the direction of a 
Society for promoting Christian knowledge at all we are at 
a loss to perceive, for we find nothing in this book that 
might not have been published by Mr. Van Voorst, or the 
most sceptical publisher in the Row. We are, in fact, a 
little jealous of religious societies publishing books of this 
sort, both on the grounds that such. books are not strictly 
Christian, and that funds are appropriated to their produc- 
tion to the injury of the regular publisher which were not 
intended for this object. It is true that this does not in any 
way interfere with the quality of the work, and this iswith what 
we have more particularly to do. As its name would imply, 
Mr. Gosse’s book is a popular introduction to working with 
the microscope. It differs, however, from other introduc- 
tions to the microscope, that it contains no account of the 
structure of the microscope at all. This is really a feature, 
albeit a negative one, in the book. As reviewers bound to 
read every word of every book we notice, we are glad for 
once to deal with one on the microscope without anything 
about the microscope at all. 
Turning to Mr. Gosse’s work, and conscientious re- 
viewers as we are, we miss a chapter of contents which 
would be particularly useful to us just now; we find 
that he treats of the usual objects examined under the 
microscope. He begins with human hairs, and _ this 
naturally enough brings him to hogs’ bristles and cats’ 
hairs. From hairs we proceed in morphological order 
to the feathers of birds and the scales of fishes. Here 
we are arrested, not in any scientific or consecutive order, by a 
chapter on the blood. Then come the shells of mollusca, 
with descriptions of the tongues, teeth, and eyes of the same 
