March 26, 1896] 



NATURE 



485 



"Given a brave, fearless soldier marching with an 

 army through a certain country for conquest and 

 pleasure, it seems that the same stories must be told of 

 his progress and exploits, whether he be Etana, (lil- 

 gamish, Nimrod, or Alexander. With the advance of 

 time the first tolerably accurate descriptions of his life 

 will be first distorted and then enlarged, and when he 

 has become a mere memory his name will be made a 

 peg on which to hang stories, legends, and myths. The 

 details of the fabulous history of such an one will be 

 modified to suit the country and ideas of the people 

 among whom the writers live, and eventually it will 

 become the popular expression of the national views of 

 each country through which the history passes of what a 

 hero should be. This is exactly what has happened to 

 the Alexander story in the hands of Semitic and other 

 writers. The Egyptians made Alexander the son of an 

 Egyptian king, and a worshipper of Amen ; the Greeks 

 made him the type of the victorious Greek conqueror ; 

 the Persians made him a Persian ; the Arabs made him a 

 servant of Allah ; the Syrians made him a Christian ; 

 and the Ethiopians depicted him as a believer in the 

 Trinity and in the Christian doctrine of the resurrection 

 of the dead." 



FISHES, LIVING AND FOSSIL. 

 Fishes, Living and Fossil : an Outline of their Forms 

 and Probable Relationships. By Bashford Dean, Ph.D. 

 Pp. xiv + 300. (New York and London : Macmillan 

 and Co., 1895.) 



DR. BASHFORD DEAN is known to zoologists, first, 

 as the author of exhaustive and critical articles in 

 the publications of the United States Fish Commission, 

 on the systems of oyster culture pursued in Europe, and, 

 secondly, as an embryologist who has lately been doing 

 good work on the development of various Ganoid fishes 

 and the comparison that may be instituted with Teleostei. 

 His recent addition to the well-known "Columbia 

 University Biological Scries," now being brought out 

 by Macmillan and Co., under the editorship of Prof. 

 H. F. Osborn, is an interesting volume upon fishes, in 

 which considerable prominence is given to the fossil 

 forms, and the whole subject is presented to us from the 

 point of view of the evolutionist. This is the charac- 

 teristic feature of the book. From the very first page 

 of the introduction to the last page in the volume, pre- 

 ceding the index, which is a table of the supposed 

 descent of the groups of fishes, the book is full of the 

 spirit and the language of evolution. 



The fossil forms are introduced \n their places amongst 

 the living members of their group, and the plan of treat- 

 ment of the groups in each chapter may be exemplified 

 by No. vi., dealing with the Dipnoi, where we have 

 first a short account of the lung-fishes, then the de- , 

 scription of their structural characters, with an account of j 

 the fossil and of the living forms, and finally a discussion I 

 of their phylogeny and relationships with other groups. 

 The figures in all parts are numerous and good, and | 

 many of them original. 



The classification adopted is in the main that of Smith 

 Woodward, in which the class Pisces excludes the Marsi- 

 pobranchii (not that these are excluded from the book), 

 and includes as sub-classes the Elasmobranchii, the Holo- 

 cphali, the Dipnoi, and the Teleostomi. Our author 

 considers then the Chimajroids as a distinct group 

 NO. 1378, VOL. 53] 



equivalent to Elasmobranchii and Dipnoi, but adds : 

 " The kinships of the Chim^roids seem unquestionably 

 nearer the stem of the sharks than that of other fishes.'' 

 He considers that the lung-fishes (Dipnoi) as a group 

 " may not unreasonably be looked upon as descended 

 from the primitive Elasmobranch stem." They are "an 

 advancing phylum from which the amphibians may early 

 have diverged." The remarkable fossil Arthrodira 

 {Coccostetis, &.C.), he follows Smith Woodward in con- 

 sidering provisionally as an order of e.xtinct and highly- 

 specialised lung fishes. \ fine figure of the head of 

 the giant predatory member of the group Dinichthys 

 intermedins, one-tenth of the natural size, forms the 

 frontispiece. These forms are now dissociated from 

 Pterichthys and other lowly Ostracoderms, and also from 

 the Siluroids, with which at various times they have been 

 compared, and are united with the Dipnoi. The author 

 believes, however, that the Arthrodirans may almost as 

 well be referred to the sharks as to the lung-fishes, and 

 that they may, perhaps, ultimately come to be regarded 

 as worthy to rank as a distinct class. Dr. Dean builds 

 his phylogeny largely on the solid basis of PaUeontology. 

 After the systemic part of the book comes a chapter on 

 development, in which, in addition to general remarks on 

 eggs and breeding habits, a brief but adequate account is 

 given of the embr>'onic and larval development of the five 

 types— Lamprey, Shark, Lung-fish, Ganoid, and Teleost, 

 with the view of contrasting the groups of fishes. This 

 section includes a summary of Semons observations on 

 Ceratodus, and is illustrated by useful figures. 



Throughout, structure is treated largely from the 

 developmental point of view, which adds to the value, 

 interest and freshness of the book. The author sums up 

 against Gegenbaur's archipterygium, and in favour of the 

 derivation of paired fins from lateral fin-folds. This 

 view is supported by the simple condition of the pectoral 

 and peh ic fins in the ancient fossil shark Cladoselache, 

 the knowledge of whose archaic characters we owe to 

 Dr. Dean himself. The vexed question of the precise 

 function of the sense organs of the lateral line is still left 

 undetermined. Beyond " feeling," in a broad sense, the 

 author merely suggests "the sensory tracts along the 

 sides of the body are certainly well situated to determine 

 the direction of the approach of friend, enemy or prey." 

 It is interesting — even if one can scarcely help feeling 

 slightly disappointed— to read that : " It must for the 

 present be concluded that the pineal structures of the 

 true fishes do not tend to confirm the theory that the 

 epiphysis of the ancestral vertebrates was connected with 

 a median unpaired eye." He considers rather that the 

 epiphysis was connected with the innervation of the 

 sensory canals of the head. 



At the end of the book we find a list of derivations of 

 names, a good bibliography classified under groups and 

 systems of organs, and, lastly, a scries of tables giving 

 in contrast form a statement of the comparative anatomy 

 and embryology of the different groups of fishes, illus- 

 trated, like the rest of the work, by a series of clear 

 figures drawn from the best sources, and many of them 

 original. No doubt specialists on fossil fishes will be 

 able to find defects and omissions, but for the ordinary 

 student of the subject Bashford Dean's volume will prove 

 useful and interesting. \V. \. H. 



