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 NEW BOOKS, WITH SHOET NOTICES. 



Evenings at the Microscope ; or, Eesearches among tLe Minuter 

 Organs and Forms of Animal Life. By Philip Henry Gosse, F.R.S. 

 A new edition. London : Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. 

 1874. — There ai'e very few microscopists who will not be pleased to 

 learn that a new edition of Mr. Gosse's excellent treatise has been 

 produced. Indeed, it is so long since the work first appeared, that to 

 many of our observers with the microscope it will be entirely a new- 

 book. But it must be confessed that to those who are already ac- 

 quainted with the volume as it was at first issued, the new edition will 

 not convey much more information than the old one. We may as well 

 state this at the outset, that we think Mr. Gosse has failed in his 

 editorial labours, for he most assuredly has not brought the book up 

 to even ten years before the date of publication. This fact and the 

 insufficient presence of engravings are the only faults we have to 

 complain of; all else is as excellent as anyone who is familiar with 

 Mr. Gosse's many able treatises on Natural Hist^jry can readily 

 imagine. The subjects which the author has undertaken to describe, 

 and which are dealt with as alone Mr. Gosse is able, are of course 

 familiar to the Fellows of the Royal Microscopical Society ; at least all 

 save one or two of the more rare and singular fonns, of which Mr. Gosse 

 has been the first and almost the sole observer. Such subjects as, for 

 example, himiau hair, and the hairs of the bat, the mouse, the cat, and 

 sheep; scales of the commoner fishes, blood disks, circulation in the 

 frog's foot, scales from gnat's wing, bristle-tail, Polyommatus, Pieris, 

 &c. ; the spiracles of flies, the mouth of a beetle ; the zoea and 

 other stages of the crab ; the anchor-plates of syuapta ; the polyps 

 of cows' paps, such are familiar enough to the general microscopic 

 observer. Some others, however, are by no means so common ; such, 

 for example, is the Lar Sahellarum, of which Mr, Gosse was for years 

 the sole observer, and which has even now been only seen by him and 

 by the Kev. T. Hincks, F.E.S., who published a paper upon this very 

 peculiar animal in the ' Annals of Natural History,' November, 1872. 

 Of this singular form a very good woodcut is given, and a capital 

 description accompanies it. This animal was observed upon the 

 anterior part of the Sabella's tube ; as Mr. Gosse says : " About twenty 

 bodies, having a most ludicrously close resemblance to the human figure, 

 and as closely imitating certain human motions, are seen standing 

 erect around the mouth of the tube, now that the Sabella has retired 

 into the interior, and are incessantly bowing and tossing about their 



arms in the most energetic manner A slender creeping thread 



irregularly crossing and anastomosing, so as to form a loose network of 

 about three meshes in width, surrounds the margin of the Sabella's 

 tube, adhering firmly to its exterior surface, in the chitinous substance 

 of which it seems imbedded. Here and there free buds are given 

 off, especially from the lower edge ; while from the upper threads 

 spring the strange forms that have attracted our notice. These are 



