BOOK REVIEWS 377 



Here are a few good nature articles in November magazines : 



Educational Bimonthly (Chicago) — Nature-Study at the Van 

 Vlissinger School (Chicago). George A. Brennan. 



Harper's Monthly — The Harvest of the Wild Places. Walter 

 Prichard Eaton. 



Outing — Wild Animal Photography. C. W. Aeppler and M. M. 

 Stierle. 



Popular Science Monthly — Phenomena of Inheritance, E. G. 

 Conklin. 



Over eighteen hundred teachers were in attendance at the North- 

 em Ilhnois Teachers Association held at Elgin, 111., November 6 

 and 7. There were several excellent papers presented on nature- 

 study and these were given not by specialists acting as promoters 

 but by teachers really doing excellent things in grade work. It was 

 a most encouraging situation. 



Book Reviews 



Water Reptiles of the Past and Present. Samuel W. 

 Williston. pp. vii + 251. The University of Chicago Press. 

 $3-oo. 



Dr. Williston is known as one of the best paleontologists of the 

 present time, and the group under discussion is his specialty. It 

 is needless to say, therefore, that it is a book that the scientist 

 interested in this particular line will welcome with pleasure. Dr. 

 Williston has the happy faculty of presenting scientific data in a 

 most interesting way, so that even the lay reader will enjoy the 

 volume. 



It is admirably illustrated and many of the illustrations of the 

 reptiles of the early ages are as strange as if drawn from the gifted 

 imagination of some teller of fairy tales. Truth is evidently 

 stranger than fiction even in reptilian affairs. 



The following excerpt is particularly interesting just at present 

 and gives one some idea of the facile style of the author. The 

 canon referred to was Dr. Goddin. 



"But the canon was ultimately despoiled of his ill-gotten trea- 

 sure. At the siege of Maestricht in 1795, the famous skull to 

 which Hofmann had devoted so much anxious thought and la1)or, 



