1893.] MICROSCOPICAL JOURNAL. 239 



NEW PUBLICATIONS. 



Principles of Zoology. A guide for Beginners, by Richard C. 

 Schiedt, Lancaster, Pa. pp. 310. 12°. 



As a condensed statement of tlie latest researches in Embry- 

 ology and as a guide to the more general classification of ani- 

 mals, this book will serve an excellent purpose. It will of ne- 

 cessity be somewhat effemeral because every year produces 

 enough new information about animals to make changes in clas- 

 sification necessary. As classification is based upon natural 

 affinities and as the knowledge of these is always defective, clas- 

 sification has been and always will be defective and changing. 

 It is greatly to be regretted that this science must be subject to 

 such changes and it is doubtful whether college students in 

 general should be expected to learn a classification to-day which 

 will change to-morrow and indeed which is not universally ac- 

 cepted even for to-day. 



The author calls his book, "a guide for beginners," and we 

 regret not to be able to agree with him. It seems to us that a 

 beginner could make no use at all of the book except under the 

 personal tuition of a thorough biologist, and that even with that 

 assistance, the beginner would fare badly indeed. Its pages 

 fairly teem with technicalities and with scientific names. The 

 author should certainly have appended a glossary of several 

 hundred words. A few hundred small cuts showing t3'pes of 

 every order and family would do something to impress upon 

 the student's mind the jargon of Greek and Latin words put be- 

 fore him. Without the glossar}'' and the cuts we fear that the 

 book will drive towards insanity some of the professor's pupils 

 and terribly diminish the number of " beginners " who will 

 seek such a guide. In saying all this, we do not wish to de- 

 tract a particle from the value of the book to specialists in bi- 

 ology and to students who have already mastered some ele- 

 mentary text-books, and who now Avish a book of reference 

 while studying museum specimens. It ought to answer the lat- 

 ter purpose well if the museum is large enough. Our increas- 

 ing knowledge of biology is rendering more and more difficult 

 the task of comprehending it and calls for new and more elab- 

 orate text-books. 



