330 NATURE-STUDY REVIEW [12:7-Oct., 1916 



along with the favorite stories or biographies quite as a matter of 

 course. 



The opportunity for effective nature-study in the schools has 

 arrived. Nothing can divert the new insistent popular and educa- 

 tional demand from a worth while course of study in elementary 

 science in the grades but the stupidity of those to whom falls the 

 task of its formulation and execution. 



Dr. Edward F. Bigelow, Sound Beach, has been elected "Scout 

 Naturalist" of The Boy Scouts of America and will conduct a 

 department "On Nature's Trail" in Boy's Life. 



The Life of Inland Waters. Jas. G. Needham and J. T. Lloyd. 

 438 pages. The Comstock Publishing Co. $3.00. 



The subtitle of this book is "An elementary text book of fresh 

 water biology for American students." It is biology from the 

 new point of view, the ecological, and it deals with animals and 

 plants in relation to their environment. The nature of the aquatic 

 environment is discussed with reference to its transparency, 

 density, chemical content, etc., at different times of day and year. 

 Then the types of aquatic environment are taken up, lakes and 

 ponds of various sorts, streams, marshes, swamps, bogs. Chapters 

 IV and V nearly two hundred pages are devoted to aquatic organ- 

 isms both plant and animal with most space given to the animals. 

 The more commonly occurring forms are described and their life 

 relations are discussed. Chapter VI is given over to aquatic 

 societies, both plant and animal, and the last chapter is on the 

 culture of fresh water forms. There is a well chosen bibliography. 



The book is to be highly commended for the unified view it gives 

 of the water environment. There have been excellent animal 

 ecologies and plant ecologies but the student usually wants to 

 study a stream or pond and desires to know not the plants only 

 or the animals but the biological relations including both plants 

 and animals. That he gets here in one excellent book. 



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