October 6, 1923] 



NA TURE 



497 



occupied Weber's interest since his first explorations 

 in those regions^ .now nearly forty years ago^ furnish 

 the reason for Hugo Merton's contribution^ a paper 

 ■ Zur Zoogeographie der Aru- und Keiinseln," resuming 

 the results of his own scientific expedition in this 

 interesting eastern region which shows such relationship 

 to Australian fauna. 



?he connexion with the fauna of British India, 



lied several years ago by the scientific staff of 



Indian Museum at Calcutta, induced Annandale 



choose as his subject a discussion of the " Marine 



lement in the Fauna of the Ganges." The bio- 



of such intermediate territories between normal 



hesh-water and real sea-water has always been a fairly 



difficult subject for comparison in difterent areas, and 



this may be partly attributed to the lack of agreement 



'" the use of the expression " brackish water." 



An attempt to suggest some unanimity has been 

 made here by Redeke : " Zur Biologic der nieder- 

 landischen Brackwassertypen," Following Einar Nau- 

 mann's investigations of the food-salts of the aquatic 

 organisms, Redeke based his division of the con- 

 ditions of life in brackish water on so-called chlorine 

 spectra. These pages should be of special interest to 

 several British zoologists. The most important divi- 

 sions are : 



Fresh water, up to loo milligrams per litre. 

 Oligohalin (slightly bracJcish), loo to looo milligrams per litre. 

 Mesohalin (brackish), looo to 10,000 milligrams per litre. 

 Polyhalin (very braclcish), more than 10,000 milligrams per litre. 



Several species are mentioned that are typical for 

 each salinity. I hope British zoologists will adopt 

 these divisions also — or propose better ones. 



As the volume is dedicated to the greatest living 

 Dutch zoologist, we are not astonished to meet a 

 number of papers which are more or less in close 

 relation to Weber's own fields of investigation. Thus 

 his friend, L. F. de Beaufort, gives " Some Remarks 

 on the Anatomy of the Melano-taeniinae," those 

 remarkable fresh- water fishes of Australia and part 

 of the neighbouring archipelago. A fine Rontgen 

 photograph shows their peculiar skull form, with the 

 characteristic protruding mouth caused by the shape 

 and position of the prsemaxillae. 



H. C. Delsman opens here a series of studies on the 

 'li \elopment of larval fish of the Java Sea and sur- 

 rounding waters, carried out in the laboratory for 

 marine investigations at Batavia. This branch of 

 nee may have a successful future for purely scientific 

 us well as for economic purposes, as hitherto it has 

 been very little studied in tropical seas. 



The director of the Zoological Garden at Amsterdam, 

 V. Kerbert, contributes from his rich collection and 

 his long experience a survey of what we know about 

 NO. 2814, VOL. I 12] 



pregnancy, birth, adolescence, and lifetime of Hippopo- 

 tamus amphibius, observed in the different zoological 

 gardens of Europe. 



Only a short time before his death, Kukenthal 

 drew up the results of his study of a fcettis of the 

 Greenland Right Whale, " Die Brustflosse des Groen- 

 landswales, Balcena mysticetus L." The study of these 

 largest of mammals is a territory on which Weber 

 and Kukenthal often met, and more than once has 

 been the subject of sharp controversy as well as of 

 sincere appreciation. 



We now pass to those papers which are more 

 distantly related to Weber's personality or to his own 

 scientific work, and as such can only be regarded as 

 the outcome of the focus of the authors' immediate 

 interest. They fall into two chief groups : systematic 

 and anatomical-phylogenetical. De Meyere on Javanese 

 agromyzines ; Doderlein on the genus Calliaster ; de 

 Man on marine nematodes ; Eigenmann, Metzelaar, 

 Clark, Nelly de Rooy, and Horst ; indeed, they are not 

 the least of zoologists who work as " mere" system- 

 atists. An admirable paper on " Repeated changing 

 of Body-forms in the Course of the Phylogeny of 

 Teleosteans " has been contributed by Abel. Here 

 again we are astonished at the author's " biological " 

 treatment of a subject so dead as the palaeontology 

 and phylogeny of extinct fishes. 



Dollo, in his own way of discussing matters, gives 

 a survey of some of the remarks and opposition 

 offered against his theory of evolution, dealing here 

 with the secondary nectonic life of Pristis and Cerato- 

 ptera and the rolling back of the curled shells of fossil 

 tetrabranchous cephalopods . According to Dollo, these 

 instances are but secondary adaptations accomplished 

 along another way. 



Finally, we wish to direct attention to Dubois' 

 paper on the question whether the brains of domesti- 

 cated dogs have increased in volume in comparison 

 with those of wild races of dogs and foxes. He has 

 worked out accurately the results of his measurements 

 and weighings, and concludes that, contrary to the 

 usual opinion that domestic animals should have 

 increased in brain weight, tame dogs at least are 

 provided with smaller brains than their wild congeners. 



From the fourteen contributions to this work 

 written in the English language reference can be made 

 only to that of R. F. Scharff " On the Origin of the 

 West Indian Fauna " — a complicated problem. 



The volume is attractively illustrated, the first 

 full-page being a fine portrait of Weber. Paper, print, 

 and illustrations are fully up to the usual standard 

 of the publications of the firm of E. J. Brill, of Leyden. 



W. G. N. VAN DER SlEEN. 



O I 



