July 19, 1900] 



NA TURE 



267 



I'.is era that the great tract of low land lying on the 



ist of England was reclaimed from the sea by the con- 

 iUuction of 50 miles of sea-banks, and the 60,000 acres 

 in the district known as Romney Marsh was protected 

 from the sea by a bank 4 miles long and 20 feet high. 

 From the time of the Romans to the Stuart period very 

 little seems to have been attempted in this way, but at 

 that time there are records of innumerable grants made 

 to " undertakers " and " adventurers " who undertook to 

 reclaim the low lands in the Isle of Axholme, Haxey 

 Chase and the Fens of Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire, 

 and other parts of the country, in return for a certain 

 proportion of the land reclaimed. Another revival took 

 place during the present century at the time when 

 agriculture was prosperous, and land-owners were 

 tempted, by the high rents then paid, to reclaim from the 

 sea numerous intakes of salt marshes by the construction 

 of sea banks in the estuaries of the Humber, the Wash, 

 the Thames, the Severn and other rivers. Since rents 

 have fallen and land-ownqrs have become impoverished 

 by the low rents, and the heavy charges thrown on estates 

 by the payment of the death duties, little or no in- 

 closing has taken place. Land, however, shows signs of 

 recovering something of its former value. The appear- 

 ance, therefore, of a book dealing with the reclamation 

 of land from tidal waters may be considered as 

 opportune. 



The only standard English book on this subject is that 

 of the late Mr. John Wiggins on the " Practice of Em- 

 banking Lands from the Sea," which is now out of print. 

 Instead of publishing a new edition with the extensive 

 alterations of the text that would be required to bring 

 this work up to date, the author of the book now under 

 review was invited by the publishers to undertake the 

 preparation of a new treatise, in which all that was ap- 

 plicable to modern practice in Mr. Wiggins' book has 

 been incorporated. 



The author has carried out his task efficiently and 

 well, and his book contains a large amount of informa- 

 tion that will be of great service to engineers, and also to 

 landed proprietors and others interested in works of 

 reclamation. 



The book makes no pretensions to originality ; 

 on the contrary, it may be regarded as an epitome 

 of the information and opinions contained in a vast 

 number of papers contained in the Minutes of Pro- 

 ceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers and the 

 papers of allied societies, and in the works of authors on 

 drainage and Fen history. 



A careful perusal of a book of this character, and the 

 principles laid down that should be observed in the re- 

 clamation of land, might have saved the expenditure of 

 many thousands of pounds on schemes that never came 

 to maturity or have proved financially disastrous. Of 

 these, as examples, may be quoted the great scheme that 

 was at one time entertained, and still has advocates, for 

 the formation of a new county in the Wash, by the en- 

 closure of the sands ; an ofifshoot of which was the abor- 

 tive scheme of Sir John Rennie for reclaiming 30,000 

 acres, the greater part of which was bare sands, which 

 experience has since proved would have been utterly un- 

 fit for cultivation ; and the Norfolk Estuary Scheme, 

 which received parliamentary sanction in 1846 to reclaim 

 NO. 1603, VOL. 62] 



30,000 acres submerged at high water, and of which up to 

 the present time, after an expenditure of nearly 400,000/., 

 there has only been reclaimed 2000 acres of marsh land 

 adjacent to the coast, a great part of which formed the 

 bed of the diverted river. In this case, great benefit has 

 resulted to the drainage of the country by a new direct 

 cut made for the outfall of the river Ouse ; but as a land 

 reclamation scheme, it has been a most disastrous failure, 

 owing to the misconception of the promoters as to the 

 action of the sea in forming deposit on the coast, and of 

 the difficulties attending the construction of sea banks. 



Mr. Beazeley's book is divided into nine chapters, deal- 

 ing respectively with : (i) General observations ; (2) the 

 site for a bank ; (3) the construction of sea banks ; (4) 

 the drainage of the land reclaimed ; (5) maintenance and 

 repair of sea banks ; (6) warping land ; (7) cultivation 

 after enclosure ; (8) examples of reclamation, value and 

 rents ; (9) legal requirements ; the text being accompanied 

 by numerous illustrations. 



THE MAMMALIAN BRAIN. 

 Handbuch der Anatomie und vergleichenden Anatomie 

 des Centralnervensystems der Sdugetiere. Von Dr. 

 Edw. Flatau und Dr. L. Jacobsohn. I. Makro- 

 skopischer Teil, mit 126 Abbildungen im Text, und 22 

 Abbildungen auf 7 Tafeln. Pp. xvi + 578. (Berlin: 

 Verlag von S. Karger, 1899.) 



THE handsome volume before us is a welcome 

 addition to works on the comparative anatomy of 

 the mammalian brain. That the literature of this subject 

 is already vast, may be gathered from the fact that nearly 

 300 papers are quoted at the end of the volume — this list 

 forming indeed a most useful bibliography. So numerous 

 and scattered are these various works, that only those 

 students who have access to very complete libraries can 

 hope to be able to consult the majority of them, and we 

 have long felt the want of a trustworthy account of the 

 structure of the brains of the various orders of mammalia 

 in a more handy form. This want is to a great extent 

 satisfied by the work of Drs. Flatau and Jacobsohn, 

 which is rather of the nature of an original contribution 

 than of a text-book. For it is no mere compilation ; 

 but, on the contrary, almost entirely consists of the 

 description of brains studied by the authors themselves 

 in Prof. Waldeyer's Anatomical Institute in Berlin. 



With admirable care the authors describe the structure 

 of the central nervous system of representative examples 

 of all the living orders of mammalia. To give the 

 reader some idea of the thoroughness of their method, 

 one may mention that in the case of the brain of the 

 Chimpanzee, for example, we find paragraphs on the brain 

 weight, the relation of the brain to the skull, the general 

 shape and measurements of the brain, followed by detailed 

 accounts of the convolutions of the cerebral hemispheres, 

 the structure of the corpus callosum, fornix, &c., of the 

 Diencephalon, Mesencephalon, Metencephalon, Myelen- 

 cephalon, and Medulla spinalis. Naturally the types of 

 all the orders are not treated in quite as much detail as 

 the Chimpanzee. At the end of the chapter on monkeys 

 and apes are elaborate tabular statements of the authors' 

 observations compared with those of previous writers on 

 the subject. Throughout, the text is illustrated by excel- 

 lent figures, almost all of which are original. The general 



