244 



NATURE 



[July 14, 1898 



OUR BOOK SHELF. 

 A Manual on General Pathology for Students and 



Practitioners. By W. S. Lazarus Barlow, B.A., B.C., 



M.D., M.R.C.P. Pp. xi + 795- (London : J. and A. 



Churchill, 1898.) 

 The book before us is a treatise on general pathology, 

 from which morbid anatomy is practically excluded. 

 To the readers of Cohnheim this subject is familiar ; the 

 author has done well to take such a book as a model, 

 and to, so to speak, bring it up to date. 



The relation between morbid anatomy and disease has 

 never been doubted. The study of a dead, dilated, 

 hypertrophied and valvularly diseased heart has always 

 been held to be of immense value to the student of 

 medicine. U must be admitted, however, that it bears 

 the same relation to disease as a scratched rock 

 does to the action of a glacier. Both are the more 

 or less permanent records of a process. However 

 valuable such records may be, it must be admitted 

 that the demonstration of the behaviour of a heart under 

 conditions more or less exactly imitating disease is also 

 of great value. It is to be regretted that while teaching 

 in morbid anatomy is all-sufficient, instruction in experi- 

 mental pathology is most often conspicuous by its 

 absence. A careful perusal, however, of Dr. Barlow's 

 work will in no small measure make up for this deficiency, 

 and the student of medicine who wants to do something 

 more than get qualified in a minimum time, will find it 

 very helpful. Although the book is ostensibly written 

 for practitioners, the reviewer is afraid that its contents 

 will only appeal to a relatively small circle of medical 

 practitioners, at any rate at present. 



It would be impossible in a short notice to even 

 enumerate the subjects treated by Dr. Barlow. The 

 chapter on osmosis will perhaps appeal most to the 

 general physiological reader ; in it is to be found a 

 description of the author's own work in this field of 

 research, and also a fair account of the work of those 

 who hold different views with regard to the function of 

 the epithelium cells involved. The pathology of the 

 circulation is well handled, but contains little of special 

 interest. Under inflammation, chemiotaxis and its 

 relation to phagocytosis are discussed. The author 

 devotes a chapter to the " Pathology of Heat Regulation," 

 at the conclusion of which fever, and tissue change in 

 fever is fully considered. Under shock and collapse, 

 which are viewed in the light of the recent experiments 

 of Roy and Cobbet, transfusion is treated in an original 

 manner. Chapter xii. forms an interesting monograph 

 on the pathology of nutrition, which is dealt with ex- 

 haustively. Chapters on morbid secretion and excretion, 

 and the pathology of respiration follow, and the book 

 concludes with a miscellaneous appendix, in which, inter 

 alia., ptomaine poisoning is briefly considered. 



The book is eminently readable, and although the 

 range of subjects covered by it is very wide, is not 

 wanting in thoroughness. Its value is enhanced by the 

 carefully compiled bibliography which concludes each 

 chapter. It is somewhat to be regretted that it should 

 appear so soon after almost similar subjects have been 

 treated either in AUbutt's "System of Medicine" or in 

 Prof. Schafer's "New Text-book of Physiology," but 

 this is obviously no fault of the author's. F. W. T. 



A Text Book of Entomology., including the Anatomy, 



Embryology and Metamorphoses of Insects, for use in 



Agricultural and Technical Schools and Colleges. By 



Prof. Alpheus S. Packard. Pp. xvii -f 729. (London : 



Macmillan and Co., Ltd. New York : The Macmillan 



Co., 1898.) 



Dr. Packard has undertaken in this text-book to review 



and epitomise the vast literature relating to the structure 



of insects. For such a task special qualifications are 



NO. 1498, VOL. 58] 



necessary ; among the rest, unflinching industry, a sound 

 judgment, and a first-hand, practical knowledge of the 

 subject. These qualifications our author exhibits on 

 every page. He has worked long and hard as an in- 

 vestigator ; he has a candid mind ; and he has spared no 

 pains either upon the collection or the elucidation of his 

 materials. The critic who tries to be wholly impartial 

 may feel compelled to point out a certain slowness to 

 draw general conclusions, which is particularly evident in 

 the concluding section on the causes of metamorphism. 

 This reserve is natural, perhaps laudable, in the writer of 

 an encyclopaedic work. Dr. Packard's book will be of the 

 greatest service to students of insect-anatomy, and almost 

 indispensable to future writers on the subject. It is a 

 great store of well-sifted and carefully arranged inform- 

 ation, which will guide the naturalist to many a special 

 research which he might easily have passed by in 

 ignorance of its very existence. We must not leave the 

 impression that Dr. Packard has done nothing but con- 

 dense into a text-book the work of other men. He has 

 made out for himself many interesting and valuable facts, 

 and in no part of this treatise does he find himself alto- 

 gether remote from his own published researches. The 

 book before us is handsomely printed, profusely illus- 

 trated, and furnished with copious bibliographical lists. 

 Together with the very dissimilar treatise by Dr. Sharp 

 in the "Cambridge Natural History," it puts the student of 

 scientific entomology into a far better position than he 

 occupied a year or two ago. Dr. Packard's book, like 

 Dr. Sharp's, should find a place in every library which 

 includes comparative anatomy, and both should be the 

 constant companions of all who occupy themselves with 

 the structure and life-histories of insects. L. C. M. 



The Mathematical Theory of the Top. Lectures delivered 

 on the occasion of the Sesquicentennial Celebration of 

 Princeton University. By Felix Klein, Professor of 

 Mathematics in the University of Gottingen. Pp. 74. 

 (New York : C. Scribner's Sons, 1897.) 

 The four lectures constituting this little book are worthy 

 of the great occasion which called forth their delivery. 

 Prof. Klein uses the particular dynamical problem of the 

 top as an illustration of the advantages that may be 

 gained by utilising the modern theory of functions in 

 applied mathematics. Instead of being content with 

 analytical processes, he strives to the utmost to give a 

 geometrical form to his formulas, and to make the 

 solution intuitive. He passes beyond the parameters of 

 Euler and Rodrigues to apply to dynamics a system of 

 coordinates which Riemann introduced forty years ago 

 in the discussion of certain geometrical problems. Using 

 also Riemann's method of conformal representation, he 

 gives an insight into the inner nature of elliptic functions, 

 and shows that his new parameters are what he calls 

 "multiplicative elliptic functions"— they miss being 

 doubly periodic by being affected by an exponential factor 

 when / (the time) is increased by a period. By means 

 of these parameters the author attains to a clearer, neater 

 and more complete solution of the problem of the motion 

 of a body about a fixed point than had hitherto been 

 reached, and justly claims that he has resolved the 

 problem into its simplest elements. He also deals with 

 Jacobi's famous theorem, that the motion of the top may 

 be represented by the relative motion of two Poinsot 

 motions (or rotations of a body about its centre of gravity 

 which is fixed). 



In generalising to the full the problem under discussion 

 the author deals with the case when the time, /, by being 

 supposed complex, becomes capable of two degrees of 

 variation. In order to get a geometrical representation, 

 he is led to consider the motion of a rigid body in hyper- 

 bolic non-Euclidean space. 



The last lecture deals with a top whose point of support 

 is no longer supposed fixed, but movable in a horizontal 



