548 REVIEW. 



be for him a lost art. He declares himself unable to mount a 

 fresh nephridium entire. This may be so, but he goes further, 

 and says, '' II n'est pas possible d'extirper I'organe segmen- 

 taire en entier, sans tirailler ou comprimer ses elements consti- 

 tuants en quelque maniere. Apres une assez longue serie de 

 tentatives inutiles, nous en sommes tenu exclusivement a la 

 methode des coupes. ^^ Of course there is a reservation in the 

 words " sans tirailler ou comprimer," but if M. Bolsius had 

 persevered in examining the fresh nephridia, in spite of a 

 little injury in preparation, he would never have committed 

 himself to the diagram which can hardly be said to adorn the 

 first plate of his first paper (1,^ fig. 1). Any good student, 

 dissecting the leech for the first time, could make a drawing 

 more nearly resembling the object itself. I may point out, by- 

 the-bye, that the way in which the lateral blood-vessel is shown 

 in this drawing indicates the utter want of attention paid by 

 our author to matters of gross anatomy. 



It is desirable to say a word with regard to M. Bolsius' 

 method of stating his discoveries before we pass to the facts 

 themselves. 



There is a style about M. Bolsius' writing, the intro- 

 duction of which into papers setting forth the results of 

 original research is much to be regretted. Every one who 

 works at a subject which has been already worked at by several 

 investigators is pretty certain to find much to contradict ; but 

 M. Bolsius is for ever faintly praising the work of his prede- 

 cessors, whose results he then proceeds to denounce as totally 

 erroneous — results which, if M. Bolsius' statement were 

 correct, must have been in many cases not the outcome of 

 observation, but of pure imagination. The whole style, 

 if I read correctly between the lines, indicates rather an 

 attempt to secure the glorification of M. Bolsius than a 

 desire to add to our knowledge of the truth. There is, 

 moreover, in places a vindictiveness which is fortunately 

 more often met with in religious controversy than in the 

 records of scientific research. The sixteen pages of what 

 ' Tlicsc figures iu thick lypc refer to the Hat of papers given above. 



