October 9, 1890] 



NATURE 



565 



mittee of the British Association for the schedules filled 

 up by the light-keepers on the coast of his county. The 

 necessary documents would doubtless have been readily 

 placed at his disposal, and comparatively meagre as the 

 results might have been, they would certainly have 

 enabled him to give a considerable amount of addi- 

 tional information. 



Like most of his fellows, Mr. Christy attaches an undue 

 value to the number of species he is able to register, and 

 his number is 272. We have often wished there would 

 arise some strong-minded man who would clearly dis- 

 tinguish between a member of a fauna and a fortuitous 

 straggler. Still, we gladly allow our present author to be 

 more discriminative than many of his brethren, and highly 

 applaud his exclusion of several species which they, or 

 some of them, welcome — yet he more than once bows the 

 knee to the prevailing Baal. It is bad enough for any 

 British faunist to admit one species of Sooty Tern, 

 especially when the alleged single specimen rests on 

 authority not quite beyond suspicion, and, though not ten 

 years have elapsed, has been "entirely lost sight of"; 

 but the inclusion of a second species dulls one's feelings, 

 like an anaesthetic — especially when we are told that in 

 this case it is the captor " who has since been lost sight 

 of" (p. 261), though the specimen is (apparently) to the 

 fore. Then, again, what can be more absurd than 

 the admission of Porphyria smaragdonotus (p. 225) — a 

 species of which living examples are yearly imported in 

 great numbers, and one that possesses faculties of 

 escaping from confinement that would have been envied 

 by a Casanova or a Baron Trenck. 



It may be urged that we have picked out trifling faults, 

 but we could reply that we have purposely chosen these 

 instances to show two at least of the failings of faunists. 

 Others we might specify of a rather different kind. It is 

 a remarkable fact for ornithologists in general that the 

 Needle-tailed Swift should have flown across the Old Con- 

 tinent from Eastern Siberia to Essex, but that fact does 

 not make it a " British " bird, and the late Mr. Yarrell — 

 generally too prone to naturalize all stragglers — was in 

 our opinion perfectly justified in refusing it a place in his 

 well-known work, while even the subsequent occurrence 

 of two examples in Hampshire does not affect his rejec- 

 tion of it. As regards the inclusion of " stragglers," the 

 line is in many cases hard to draw, but in one such as 

 this there ought to be no doubt in the mind of anybody 

 who has a decent acquaintance with the geographical 

 distribution of animals. 



The present work differs of all others of its kind in two 

 respects, and one of them is deserving of much praise. 

 This is the useful " Biographical Notices of the principal 

 Essex Ornithologists," which are' greatly to the point, 

 and generally, as appears to us, well done, though Mr. 

 Christy is somewhat lavish of the expression " excellent 

 ornithologist." That would doubtless be applicable to 

 John Ray, who is not included, but in its literal sense to 

 few if any others. Yet men like Sheppard, Hoy, and 

 Henry Doubleday were worthies who left their mark on 

 British natural history, and fully merit all that is said of 

 them, while Christopher Parsons seems to have been 

 one of those diligent observers who delight in hiding 

 their candle under a bushel, and we feel under an 

 obligation to Mr. Christy for bringing him out of obscurity. 

 NO. 1093. ^'OL. 42] 



Of the other distinctive feature of the work we cannot re- 

 port so favourably. It is the needless introduction of a 

 considerable number of figures representing the birds 

 mentioned. Some of them, it is true, are reproductions of 

 Bewick's well-known woodcuts, and therefore right in the 

 main, however poor the imitation. Next, if not equal to 

 them, are the few drawn by Mr, Wolf ; but the adapta- 

 tions of the engravings from Yarrell's work, if they can- 

 not be called absolutely bad, are objects about as dis- 

 agreeable as one ordinarily encounters, and there are 

 others, the source of which we cannot divine, that make 

 one shudder, for the draughtsman has evidently copied too 

 faithfully (as the manner is nowadays) the distortions of 

 the bird-stuffer — as witness the figure of the Swift (p. 144), 

 which reminds one forcibly of the impossible tenants of 

 the air in the familiar willow-pattern plate. 



To sum up, let us say that with all its shortcomings 

 Mr. Christy's book is one that must demand the attention 

 of every British ornithologist, for it " means business." 

 There is no attempt at fine writing in it, and yet its com- 

 position has clearly been a labour of love to the author. 

 We trust he may be rewarded by a successful sale, which 

 the populous county of Essex ought to insure, and be 

 able to bring out a new edition. If so, let him eschew 

 his woodcuts, and in their place give us more large type. 



HYPNOTISM. 

 Hypnotism. By Albert Moll, of Berlin. " Contemporary 

 Science Series." Edited by Havelock Ellis. (London : 

 Walter Scott, 1890.) 



THIS book by Dr. Albert Moll, a physician of Berlin, 

 on hypnotism, now presented to us in a becoming 

 English dress, marks a step of some importance in the 

 study of some difficult physiological and psychological 

 problems which have not received much attention in the 

 scientific world of England. The appearance of a text- 

 book on any subject in a set of hand-books such as the 

 " Contemporary Science Series," indicates a general agree- 

 ment on the main points of knowledge, and in this case 

 a full admissal of the subject to the category of recognized 

 science. Dr. Moll's work has already been widely accepted 

 as a text-book in the German schools which are beginning 

 to take some interest in his subject. The first edition 

 was published hardly eighteen months ago, and was very 

 rapidly exhausted ; the second, from which this English 

 translation has been made, shows good proof of the dili- 

 gence and care of the author, in the large amount of new 

 matter incorporated with the old, so that on the whole it is 

 well up to date, a matter not so easy to accomplish in 

 treating of a rapidly growing subject such as hypnotism, 

 on which nowadays there are published some 300 books, 

 pamphlets, and articles every year. There has often been 

 in this crowd of minor literature of late years a tone of 

 somewhat indignant, sometimes injured self-assertion, such 

 as is not unnatural to the friends of a young branch of 

 knowledge, who are anxious and perhaps over-anxious to 

 establish its position on equal terms with its seniors. But 

 Dr. Moll's hand-book embodies an essentially non-com- 

 bative survey of the full breadth of the subject, including 

 both the details of the physical and physiological condi- 

 tions of hypnotism on the one side, and on the other the 

 alterations of personality and the more delicate points of 



