Sept. 5, 1878] 



NATURE 



497 



in many orders of it, during the last few years is consi- 

 dered, his contribution requires very equitable criticism. 

 By choosing types of the great groups, by a free use of 

 the observations and sketches made at the Naples and 

 other aquaria, and by some happy selections of the results 

 of the deep-sea dredgings of late years, a very presentable 

 book has been put together. Nevertheless, the book will 

 not satisfy the English reader who is likely to study it. 

 Too good for the great mass of readers, it is so very defi- 

 cient in the descriptive morphology and teleology of the 

 lowest groups, especially, that the great want of the mode- 

 rately-educated naturalist is not satisfied. The author's 

 title-page dates 1878, but much of the best work of the 

 world during the previous two years is not introduced. 

 With regard to the authors who are quoted and utilised, 

 there is a curious absence of some of the best English 

 works, and the names of some of the most distinguished 

 naturalists in the world are conspicuous by their absence. 

 We protest very meekly, however, for it is good to be 

 humble as the Germans were ten years ago-, and when 

 they did their best work and could think that their fellow- 

 labourers who happened to differ from them were not 

 absolute fools. Another peculiarity of this volume, is the 

 highly diagrammatic nature of some of the views from the 

 life ; but it is compensated for by the elegance and artistic 

 grouping of many of the objects in the larger plates, and 

 by the introduction of many novelties. The book com- 

 mences with the Crustacea, the worms follow, the brachio- 

 pods and rotifera being in the midst, and the bryozoa 

 coiicluiing the group, and then come the Weichthiere, 

 including the cephalopoda, pulmonata, prosobranchia, 

 heteropoda, opistobranchia, and pteropoda. The bivalves 

 follow, and then the ascidia. The great group of the 

 echinoidea is despatched in twenty-four pages. The 

 CElenterata, ;;including, according to the last morpho- 

 logical craze, the sponges, occupy less than one hun- 

 dred, and the vast group of the protozoa less than 

 thirty pages. Of this classification the less that is said 

 the better ; it is the age of novelties ; but there are still 

 some who do not yet fall down and worship the dross 

 metal image Haeckel and others have set up. An inter- 

 esting figure of the spider crab in its aquarium home 

 gives the peculiar forward droop of the great claws and 

 the daddy-long-legs appearance of the other members : 

 and in another, one of the very opposite dromia group is 

 bedecked with a sponge. A fine plate of pagurids shows 

 one about to change its domicile and another with its 

 usual sea anemone on its protecting shell. There are 

 some interesting remarks on the parasitic amphipods, 

 and the structure and the relations of Phroniina seden- 

 teria to doliolum and pyrosoma are noticed. 



The smaller Crustacea are illustrated by the life history 

 and anatomy of Acanthocercus, and there is the queerest 

 transparent Leptodora hyalina delineated ; and it is to be 

 hoped that it is more truthful than the Paradoxides on 

 the next page but one, which has no facial suture, and 

 whose cephalic shield is out of drawing. The chapter on 

 the cirripedia is poor ; and it would have been all the 

 more complete if an abstract of the interesting paper on 

 Lepas fascicularis, by poor von Willemoes-Suhm, had 

 been given from the Phil. Trans. The successive 

 nauplius stages, the cypris stage, and the absence of the 

 Zoea, were so splendidly worked out, that any modern 

 natural history should contain them. On the other hand, 

 tlie huge group of worms is very fully and ably dealt 

 Avith. Nevertheless, it is to be hoped that some zoologist 

 who may read Schmidt's resumS will speedily break it up 

 into reasonable divisions, or rather separate and alto- 

 gether reorganise the unwieldy, incongruous class. 

 Amongst the rotifera Notomata fnysmeleo is chosen as 

 a type, and is carefully described and ably drawn from 

 nature by Simroth, to whom the author is frequently 

 under great obligation for exact and artistic illustrations. 

 The exquisite Floscularia, however, is not satisfactorily 



given, and indeed to do so is hardly possible on wood. 

 The five circum-oral prominences, armed each with a 

 bundle of long protoplasmic filaments, which elongate 

 and radiate, becoming like stiff hairs, and which 

 diminish,, become flaccid, and are retired as the creature 

 contracts, are so well known to all observers of pond life, 

 that good indeed must be the draughtsman who can 

 faithfully convey the true impression. The parasitic 

 worms are abundantly dealt with ; but we miss the late 

 researches on the land planarians. The general weak- 

 ness of the chapter on the bryozoa is compensated for by 

 the description and life-history of the extraordinary 

 sponge-dweller Loxosoma, with its schwarm larvae, and 

 their metamorphosis. 



Octopus vulgaris and Eledone moschata vie amongst 

 the dibranchiata in ugliness in the illustrations relating 

 to the cephalopoda, but there is nothing very new in the 

 context. Amongst the shell-fish the most interesting 

 forms noticed, are the heteropoda ; and the gradation 

 from the shelled Atlanta, whose description and delinea- 

 tion is very good, through carinaria and pterotrachsea to 

 the naked phyllirhoe, resplendent with luminous spots 

 by night, is well done. The pterotracheae, so translucent 

 and long and shell-less, with their tufted gills and absent 

 tentacles, have evidently been carefully studied at the 

 Naples aquarium, and all about them will be read with 

 much interest. Doris and its neighbour Ancula cristata, 

 and the extraordinary Dendronoius arborescens, are 

 admirably given. There is much that will be new to the 

 ordinary English naturalist, in the chapters on pteropoda, 

 and the extraordinary larva of pneumodermon will excite 

 as much attention as that of dentalium in the next 

 chapter. Panceri's discoveries of the nature of the 

 luminous organs of pholas are given, and the pecuHar 

 phosphorescent secretion is noticed. The chief merit of 

 the chapter on the Ascidia is in the illustrations ; but pyro- 

 soma, with its wonderful luminous points, is well described, 

 Panceri again being quoted from. The echinoderms 

 are briefly treated, and the only two points worthy of 

 notice are illustrations, one of urchins in the Neapolitan 

 Aquarium, and the other of a comatula crawling over a 

 sabella, with alternate legs, as is their wont. But there 

 is a curious story in the context, relating to the fipssiarity 

 of Ophiaclis virescens, a six-armed Ophiurid. From this 

 point the book is too short, and the important groups 

 still unnoticed, are passed over too quickly. Beautiful 

 engravings of hydrozoa, corals, and spongida abound, 

 but the same cannot be said of those of the infusoria and 

 amceba. Acineta is unlike nature, amoeba does not 

 show the peculiar head, and Gro7nia oviformis has its 

 pseudopodia too moniliform; the last news about globi- 

 gerina is not given. Finally, the drawing of the solitary 

 radiolarian is wretched, and pretty noctiluca, with its 

 vacuolated protoplasm, would have been all the better 

 done if Allman had been studied and quoted. There are, 

 however, very few shortcomings in this most interesting 

 volume. 



Dr. A. E. Brehm's volume on the reptiles and amphibia 

 is magnificent, and combines good zoology with sufficient 

 morphology and physiology, so as to make it a very 

 useful book. Gustav Miitzel, E. Schmidt, ani Robert 

 Kretschmer as artists have produced some wonderful 

 plates, and the pages may be opened haphazard and good 

 illustrations are sure to be seen. There is nothing 

 harder to draw truthfully and artistically than a snake, 

 and Miitzel's Morelia argus (Python punctatus) on page 

 337 is the best realisation of a huge serpent on a tree- 

 bough overhanging the water, and about to make its rush. 

 When such ophidia partly cling, there is a remarkable 

 flattening and angularity of the body at the spot ; else- 

 where the trunk may be as cylindrical as usual. This, so 

 well known to the ancient sculptors, has generally been 

 forgotten by modern draughtsmen, who generally draw 

 a snake like a rope. In the instance before us, the truth is 



