Juurniljll^eTi^7a^ NEW BOOKS, WITH SHORT NOTICES. 317 



structureless, and prefer with Robin to describe it as sometimes 

 granular. Indeed, if we mistake not, Dr. Beale, in Ids earlier 

 descriptions, also characterized it as granular." * The book is one 

 which every student of general histology should possess. It is, 

 unquestionably, the most comprehensive essay on the whole subject 

 which has yet been published. 



Zeitschrift fur Parasitenkunde. Herausgegeben von Dr. Ernst 

 Hallier, Professor der Botanik in Jena, vmd Dr. F. A. Zurn. 

 Erster Band. Jena: Mauke's Verlag. — We hope to notice this 

 the first part of a now and valuable journal of Parasitology more 

 fully in onv next number. In the meantime we would direct 

 our readers' attention to it. It is a thick 8vo journal, with six 

 large folding plates, and some hundreds of exquisitely-di-awn figures 

 of vegetable (fungoid) parasites of different kinds, and contains 

 some thirty different communications on various departments of 

 parasitology. 



Becherches sur la Composition et la Signification de I'oeuf, hasees siir V etude 

 de son mode de Formation et des Premiers Phenomenes Emhrijon- 

 naires. Par Edouard Van Beneden, Docteur en Sciences Na- 

 turelles, Bruxelles. Hayez, 1870. — It is only necessary to 

 say of this splendid quarto that it is the great memoir which 

 obtained the prize offered by the Belgian Academy for the 

 best essay on "The Anatomical Constitution of the Egg in the 

 different Classes of the Animal Kingdom, its Mode of Forma- 

 tion, and the Signification of the different Parts which compose 

 it." The work, which has been " crowned " by the Academy, is, it 

 must be confessed, one well worthy to take its place beside the 

 great memoirs of Von Bar and the other masters in embryology. 

 The aim of the author has been to show the relation between the 

 ovum and the cell, and thus to demonstrate whether any and what 

 analogy exists between the ova of different classes of animals. In 

 a word, these labours have been directed to the discovery of those 

 differences which exist between the ovum as the product of a single 

 gland, and the ovum as it proceeds from two separate glands, 

 " germigenous " and " vitellogcnous." In dealing with this com- 

 plex question, M. Van Beneden has investigated the structure and 

 development of the ovum in an immense multitude of species rang- 

 ing over the intestinal worms and Turbellaria, Crustacea, Birds and 

 Mammals. The fruits of his work are recorded in nearly 300 

 pages which constitute this essay, and are figured in the twelve 

 admirably-drawn plates appended to the text. In addition, there 

 is furnished a very able historical sketch of the progress made in 

 the knowledge of this branch of embryology. The chief conclusion 

 at which the author arrives has been already in part stated in a paper 

 which appeared in these pages, but it may thus again be stated : 

 — " In every ovum, whether of a mammal or a bird, a criistacean 

 or a Trematode, we find a protoplasmic cell whose nucleus is the 

 germinal vesicle, and whose nucleolus is Wagner's corpuscle. 



* ' Archives of Medicine,' vol. ii., p. 189. 



