74 Bibliographical Notices. 



tions respecting the distribution and occurrence of those 

 bodies. 



There is scarcely any phenomenon in the plant-world under 

 the influence of light for the judging of which some new or 

 essentially changed points of view are not gained through the 

 theory here set up of the action of chlorophyll, and through 

 the proof of the influence of light upon the respiration of 

 plants. In the already mentioned memoir (in my ' Jahr- 

 biicher fur wissenschaftliehe Botanik '), with the preparation 

 of which for the press I am now occupied, and which will 

 bring into view the various forms of the hypochlorin needles, 

 1 hope to introduce some further details even in this 

 direction. 



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTICES. 



A Manual of Palaeontology for the Use of Students. By H. Alleyne 

 Nicholson, M.D., D.Sc, F.G.S., &c. 2nd Edition. Revised and 

 greatly enlarged. In two vols. Edinburgh and London : W. 

 Blackwood and Sons, 1879. 



The study of fossil remains may be considered under different 

 aspects — either in their biological relations, or in relation to the 

 nature and succession of life in time, or as characteristic medals of 

 different geological periods, or as explaining, from the known habits 

 of closely-related forms, the conditions under which the various 

 sedimentary formations were deposited. In whatever way we 

 may wish to interpret them, a concise account of their nature and 

 character is essential to the student of the life-history of the globe. 



Few special treatises have been devoted to this subject, although 

 notices of fossils occur in most geological text-books. The earlier 

 works of Parkinson in 1811 and 1822, useful for their time, were 

 twenty-two years later superseded by Mantell's ' Medals of Crea- 

 tion ' (1844-54), which in its turn was followed (1860-61) by the 

 more special w T ork on Palaeontology of Prof. Owen. Based upon the 

 same principle as the latter work, tbe first edition of Prof. Nichol- 

 son's ' Manual of Palaeontology ' appeared in 1872, containing about 

 600 pages and 400 woodcuts. 



With the exception of the omission of the last section, devoted 

 to historical and stratigraphical geology, and which is, to some 

 extent, embodied in the author's ' Ancient Life-History of the 

 Earth,' in general arrangement the present edition is similar 

 to the former; but it has been so thoroughly revised, greatly 

 augmented, and largely rewritten, with the addition of nearly 

 double the number of woodcuts, that it may be considered almost 

 a new work, comprising a comprehensive account of the leading 



