Aur.usT 1, 1893. j 



KNOWLEDGE. 



155 



Xoticcs of UooRsj. 



Moral Ti'(icliiit(f< of Sriiinr. \>y Arabella B. Buckley. 

 (Edward Stanford.) — I'nlike most of Miss Buckley's works, 

 the present little book is not specially addressed to young 

 people, but to those who, as she says in her preface, 

 " feeling puzzled and adrift in the present chaos of opinion, 

 may welcome even a partial solution, from a scientific 

 point of view, of the difficulties which oppress their minds." 

 It is an earnest and sober attempt to throw the light of 

 optimism upon some of the most serious of the problems 

 which beset the thoughtful and sympathetic student of 

 human life. Starting with an exposition, accompanied by 

 illustrative details, of the grand generalizations whicli 

 have been amongst the proudest achievements of modern 

 science, she endeavours to show that they tend in the 

 direction of hope rather than of despair, even when their 

 operation seems most ruthless ; and thus she claims that 

 the gi'eat facts of evolution, natural selection, and the 

 uniformity of law have a bearing upon the sphere of 

 morals and duty, and that they tend to give the advantage 

 in the long run to right rather than to might. There 

 rings through the book a healthy tone, which is likely to 

 be beneficial and to make it helpful in building up a sturdy 

 and robust habit of thought. 



Hopjiii flours. By Martha Hill and Friends. (George 

 Bell and Sons.) — An old friend in a new dress. The six 

 volumes of the " Parents' Cabinet," originally projected 

 by Mrs. Hill, have been re-issued with the above title, 

 under the editorship of Miss Constance Hill, daughter of 

 the original foundress. They comprise a collection of 

 short pieces on all imaginable subjects interesting to 

 children. Brief articles on natural history, scientific 

 inventions, biography, &c., are judiciously interspersed 

 with juvenile tales of a more general character ; and all 

 are written in a bright, pleasant, and more or less con- 

 versational style, which will be as welcome to the rising 

 generation of to-day as it was to their predecessors of 

 forty years ago. The scientific articles are generally 

 accurate and up to date, as well as suited to the compre- 

 hension of the auditory for whom they are composed. In 

 these volumes, each of which is complete in itself, mothers 

 will find a useful addition to the nursery library, containing 

 as they do matter suited to varied ages and tastes. 



TItr ApoJidfr : ii MorplioliKi'ical Studi/. By H. M. 

 Bernard, M.A. (Macmillan & Co.) — This is a remarkable 

 book. To none but experts will the title be likely to 

 convey much information, for the Apodidse are not a very 

 widely known set of animals. They are a numerically 

 small group of fresh-water crustaceans, constituting a 

 family of the order Phyllopoda. The specimens upon 

 •which Mr. Bernard's work was done were chiefiy received 

 from the Arctic regions, and especially from Spitzbergeu. 

 It is much more than a mere detailed account of the 

 morphology of this curious group ; it is the laborious 

 investigation of a thorough-going phylogeny-hunter, carried 

 out with zeal and energy under the inspiration of a bold 

 and original speculation, and the problem whose solution 

 is proposed gradually grows from that of the origin of 

 this particular group to so large a generalization as the 

 genealogy of the whole class Crustacea. The theory the 

 author endeavours to establish is primarily that the 

 ApodidiE are derivable from an annelid or primitive worm 

 that adopted a certain peculiar habit of life, and that in 

 fact they represent the original stock of the Crustacea and 

 constitute a transitional form between that class and the 

 Annelida. His argument proceeds upon the assumption 

 that a primitive carnivorous worm exchanged the habit of 

 capturing its prey by the protrusion of its pharynx for a 



browsing method of feeding, and that "the further develop- 

 ment of this habit would lead to a hcniUnij round oi the head 

 sufticient to enable the animal to use its anterior parapodia 

 for pushing prey into its mouth ; in time the bend of the 

 head would become fixed, and the parapodia modified as 

 jaws and maxilla'." The argument depends entirely 

 upon this assumption of ttie bemliiKi of the first five seg- 

 ments of the worm's body, and one would have expected 

 the author therefore to be a little more anxious to show 

 the reasonableness of his preliminary hypothesis. It is 

 not easy to see what should have tempted this primitive 

 worm to adopt as an established habit a method of taking 

 its food which seems as though it must at first have been 

 extremely awkward ; and yet the results of such adoption 

 were not, according to the author, either insignificant or 

 temporary, but of the most far-reaching consequence, for 

 from this bent annelid he proposes to derive the innumer- 

 able forms of both existing and extinct Crustacea. Apart 

 from this initial difficulty the argument is conducted with 

 much ingenuity, though occasionally the author appears 

 to allow his enthusiasm to outrun his caution, and he is 

 surely venturing on risky ground when he says, speaking 

 of the possibility of deducing the various crustacean organs, 

 one by one, irom structures known to exist in the Annelida, 

 " it is enough for our argument if we can show that such 

 a deduction is possible : it is not essential to our theory 

 that we should show exactly hoir the inner transformation 

 actually took place." Such a statement seems to need a 

 more comprehensive qualification than is contained in 

 what follows, that '■ the validity of our argument can only 

 be seriously weakened by showing . . . that the im- 

 probability of such a transformation is so great that no 

 e.xperienced morphologist would accept it." 



THE MIGRATION OF BIRDS. 



By G. W. BuLMAN, M.A., B.Sc. 



IN his book on " The Migration of Birds," '■'• Mr. Dixon 

 has focused the scattered rays of knowledge we 

 possess on this subject. For the first time, he claims 

 to have gathered together in one volume an outline 

 of the whole science of the subject. The book com- 

 mences with a sketch of the history of ancient opinions 

 on the migration of birds, and passes on to a discussion of 

 hibernation. On this question Mr. Dixon is careful not to 

 commit himself to any decided opinion. It is, indeed, a 

 delicate subject to handle, and it is hardly possible for an 

 ornithologist to touch the pitch of the hibernation theory 

 without being defiled; or as it has been said, "it is as 

 much as a virtuous ornithologist's name is worth for him 

 so much as to whisper hibernation, torpidity, and mud.'' 



In spite of this danger, and " at the risk of being 

 ' handled without gloves ' by some mud and torpor despising 

 bruiser critic,'' ]\lr. Dixon expresses his conclusion as to 

 hibernation thus : — 



" I neither accept nor deny it, although fully believing 

 it possible, considering that such an attitude is the most 

 scientific position to assume until the subject has been 

 more fully investigated." 



From the connection in which the name of Olaus 

 Magnus is mentioned, a careless reader might imagine he 

 was a contemporary of Aristotle. Mr. Dixon might have 

 mentioned that he was a Swedish divine, who lived in the 

 sixteenth century, and wrote on the natural history of his 

 country. Olaus Magnus was acquainted with the idea 

 held by others, that swallows migrated to warmer countries 

 for the winter, but expressed his own opinion thus : — 



* ■' Tlie Migration of Birds," by Cliarlos Dixon. London, 1892. 



