October 14, 1897] 



NATURE 



565 



OUR BOOK SHELF. 

 The Story of Germ Life. Bacteria. By H. W. Conn. 



From the Library of Useful Stories. (London : George 



Newnes, Ltd , 1897.) 

 This is a laborious and conscientious compilation of 

 facts about bacteria, made ostensibly with the object of 

 removing the slur said to have been cast upon these 

 minute vegetables by an unsympathetic and unenlightened 

 public. Had the writer been rather less ambitious in his 

 desire to impart all the information he has collected, the 

 story he tries to tell might have gained in the telling, 

 and we should have had less of a record and more of a 

 narrative concerning the habits and idiosyncrasies which 

 prevail amongst the members of a microbial community. 

 Tiie tone adopted is often authoritative, and we should 

 1)6 glad to learn on what grounds Mr. Conn ventures to 

 assert so positively that "preventive medicine will always 

 remain unimportant." 



The book claims thirty-four illustrations as an addition 

 to the text, which are intended to represent various 

 varieties of bacteria. Does Mr. Conn imagine because 

 he is supposed to be talking to the uninitiated that his 

 pictures of bacteria must be therefore correspondingly 

 large, much in the same way as some people shout at 

 foreigners, with the idea of making themselves more 

 easily understood ? As no information is given of the 

 relation which exists between the size of the original 

 object and the terrible travesties by which they are repre- 

 sented in the text, we much doubt if all the persuasive 

 powers of the author will succeed in making the public 

 regard his microbes in a friendly light. 



Mr. Conn, however, has the merit of having conscien- 

 tiously endeavoured to obtain accuracy in the manipula- 

 tion of his material, a merit which is none too common 

 in the popular treatment of scientific subjects, and the 

 little volume bears throughout the impress of one who is 

 an investigator and not only a writer. 



G. C. Frankland. 



Natural Elementary Geography. By Jacques W. Red way. 



Pp. 144. (New York : American Book Co., 1897.) 

 The illustrations are so numerous and attractive in this 

 xolume, that they make a picture-book of geography. 

 The book has been constructed upon the plan recom- 

 mended by the Committee of F'ifteen appointed to con- 

 sider the lines along which mstruction in elementary 

 science should be given (see NATURE, vol. liv. p. 310, 

 1896). The view of the Committee was that geography 

 should be the study of the physical environment of man, 

 and this conception has been borne in mind in the. pre- 

 paration of the volume before us. Beginning with 

 familiar facts, the pupil is led naturally to knowledge 

 beyond the range of his observation ; generalisations 

 never bemg made until the materials for their formation 

 have been studied. He is encouraged to think for him- 

 self, by making much of the text interrogative, and 

 providing material for the correlation and comparison of 

 the characteristics of different districts ; he is shown the 

 value of map drawing and sand modelling in elementary 

 geography, and relief maps give him good general 

 ideas of the topography of the continents. 



The pictures illustrate simple subjects, and will in- 

 struct as well as interest the young pupils who use the 

 book. 



As the book is an American production, it is largely 

 devoted to the geography of the United States, less than 

 two pages being given to the British Isles. 



lection of miscellaneous botanical information. Many of 

 the articles were referred to in our Notes when the 

 Bulletins containing them appeared ; nevertheless, atten- 

 tion may again be usefully directed to the articles on 

 root diseases caused by parasitic fungi, natural sugar in 

 tobacco, the new rubber industry in Lagos, sheep-bushes 

 and salt-bushes, the cultivation of india-rubber in Assam, 

 the botany of Formosa, German colonies in Tropical 

 Africa and the Pacific, the Highland Coffee of Sierra 

 j Leone, and the flora of Tibet. The volume contains a 

 review of the various aspects of the work of Kew since 

 1887, when the now familiar Kew Bulletin first made its 

 appearance. We reprint this retrospect in another part 

 of the present issue ; and it furnishes the best of evidence 

 of the active part which Kew plays in the development 

 of our tropical possessions. 



Wild Neighbours : Out-door Studies in the United 

 States. By Ernest Ingersoll. Pp. viii -I- 301. Wood- 

 cuts. (New York and London : Macmillan and Co., 

 1897.) 

 This collection of articles from various magazines may 

 be recommended to observers, and especially to young 

 observers, of North American life. It contains a good 

 [ deal of information, is written in an easy style, and bears 

 1 frequent marks of personal familiarity with the animals 

 described. A foreigner, visiting the United States for 

 the first time, would pick up from this book, very rapidly 

 and pleasantly, such knowledge of the commoner quad- 

 rupeds as he might extract from a well-informed naturalist, 

 native to the country, in two or three weeks. The author 

 has the habit of inquiry, and this renders his book par- 

 ticularly fit for young people, who may hope to fall in 

 with grey squirrels, Canadian porcupines, skunks, 

 racoons and wood-chucks. Perhaps the chapter on the 

 " Badger and his kin " might leave the impression that 

 shrews and moles are near relatives of the badger. 

 "Animal training and animal intelligence" is a little 

 bookish ; and the performing elephants, &c., have little 

 to do with the main subject. But these are trifles. The 

 book is good of its kind. L. C. M. 



LETTERS TO THE EDITOR. 



' The Editor does not hold himself re ^fonsible for opinions ex- 

 pressed by his correspondents Neither can he undertake 

 to return, or to correspond wilh the writers of, rejected 

 manuscripts intended for this or any other part of NATURE. 

 Xo notice is taken of anonymous communications.'^ 



Edible Copepoda, 



It is no novelty to biologists that the Copepoda of the sea are 

 edible ; but it may interest some of your readers to hear that to- 

 day, when passing through the Labrador current, in about long. 

 50° W., we caught, cooked, and ate a number of the large 

 Copepoda which swarm there. It certainly seemed a new idea 

 10 the captain and some of the British Association passengers, 

 who partook of the Copepoda stew, that it was possible to 

 collect from an Atlantic liner going at full speed a sufficient 

 quantity of these pelagic animals to make a respectable dish. 



I may add that the collecting, on Dr. John Murray's plan, is 

 as easy as the cooking. The sea-water is pumped into the ship, 

 and is strained as it runs out through five silk nets of different 

 degrees of fineness — four of them on overflow and taps running 

 continuously day and night, the fifth in the bath worked inter- 

 mittently for certain hours. W. A. Herdman. 



S.s. Parisian, September 29. 



K'ew Bulletin of Miscellaneous Information, 1896. 

 (London : H.M. Stationery Office.) 



The Bulletins issued from the Royal Gardens, Kew, i shall be grateful if you will allow me to communicate, 

 during 1896, are bound together with a very full index in • through your columns, to mathematicians generally, but specially 

 the volume before us, the result being a valuable col- j to those engaged in teaching arithmetic, two new rules, which 



NO. 1459, VOL. 56] 



Brief Method of Dividing a Given Number by 9 or 11. 

 I sflALL be grateful if you will allow ms 



