34° 



NA TURE 



[February 12, 1903 



officialism ; he is having a hard battle, but there are signs 

 of victory in sight; the appearance of this translation 

 will add to the discomfiture of his antagonists, when 

 they see that he has secured an influential following in 

 Germany. 



The translation is very faithful — rather too much so in 

 parts where misprints and slight errors have not been 

 corrected, as, for instance, in § 189, where an attempt is 

 made to show why alternators tend to synchronism 

 when in parallel ; Prof. Perry should develop the facts 

 more thoroughly, as we know now that the tendency to 

 synchronism exists only under very restricted conditions 

 not always to be secured in practical working. 



Dr. Robert Fricke's experience as a professor at a 

 technical high school has had a useful effect of correction 

 on the sublimity of his researches in the exalted regions 

 of modular and automorphic functions, and has led him 

 and his colleague to appreciate a work which most 

 professional mathematicians are too prejudiced to 

 understand. A. G. Gref.n t hill. 



A MUSEUM CATALOGUE. 



Descripthie and Illustrated Catalogue of the Physiolo- 

 gical Series of the Museum of the Royal College of 

 Surgeons, London. Vol. ii. Pp. ix + 518. Second 

 edition. (London : Taylor and Francis, 1902.) 



IT is now more than two years since we reviewed the first 

 volume of this series (NATURE, vol. lxii. p. 385), and 

 to the present one, the second, we are disposed to extend 

 even greater praise than to the first. The book has thrice 

 the bulk of its predecessoi, and it is wholly concerned 

 with the descriptions of the nervous system of certain 

 Invertebrates, and the brain and spinal cord, with their 

 membranes and blood-vessels, of Vertebrates. Its main 

 portion is the work of Prof. Elliot Smith, of Cairo, 

 now our foremost authority on the Vertebrate brain ; 

 and in it he describes the brains of the Reptilia and 

 Mammalia in a manner never before attained. He was 

 induced to undertake the task by Prof. C. Stewart, the 

 curator of the museum, at the time at which, in the 

 ordinary course of work, the unparalleled series of 

 mammalian brains which the College possesses were 

 being remounted. Ripe for the opportunity of handling 

 this material, Dr. Elliot Smith has given us, not a mere 

 catalogue, but a masterly treatise teeming with revisionary 

 and new observations, which make for orderly treatment 

 and simplification in a manner surpassing those of most 

 previous essays of the kind. 



Some notion of his methods and results may be formed 

 from a brief risume of his work on the "pallium" and 

 " Sylvian fissure," two of the most important things of 

 which he treats. In dealing with the former, he applies 

 to the pyriform lobe and the hippocampus the terms 

 "basal" and "marginal" pallium, in order sufficiently to 

 emphasise, for the first time, the fact that the intervening 

 area or "neopallium," the most variable, is both morpho- 

 logically and physiologically the most important pallial 

 constituent, and that in the study of this, which he defines 

 as " the organ of associative memory," lies the clue to 

 the chief determination of the real nature of at least the 



NO. 1737, VOL. 67] 



cerebrum of the leading mammalian types. 1 As to the 

 "Sylvian fissure," we meet with an ever-recurring treat- 

 ment of it throughout the book ; and in establishing the 

 fact that the cortical areas from which its lips are formed 

 are non-homologous in different mammals, the author 

 shows that by failure to appreciate this in the past an 

 inextricable confusion has arisen. Concluding that the 

 Sylvian fissure proper is in its complete form found only 

 in the human brain, and proving that it results from the 

 meeting of three sulci phylogenetically distinct and 

 variable in extent and interrelationship among the lower 

 forms, introducing a rational terminology, he has 

 systematised this complex subject on entirely new lines ; 

 and it is worthy of remark that he of necessity once 

 more establishes a distinction between the pallial surface 

 of man and the higher apes. 



This much is simply revolutionary, but it is characteristic 

 of the whole book ; and when it is seen that the brains of 

 representative members of every family have come under 

 review, that in the case of many extinct forms casts of 

 the brain-cavity have been studied, that there are 

 220 new illustrations, in themselves as accurate as the 

 text, and that an all-sufficient bibliography is given, 

 the result is one upon which all concerned are to be 

 heartily congratulated. 



The book forms the framework of an arch, of which 

 the parts necessary for its completion have been obtained 

 by the study, in Cairo and elsewhere, of such material 

 as was originally lacking. There will shortly appear in 

 the Transactions of the Linnean Society two memoirs 

 directly related to this catalogue, which, as read, give 

 promise of results at least equal to those of the author's 

 great achievements with the Edentata, the Monotremes 

 and Marsupialia, now everywhere recognised as of prime 

 importance and in the highest degree luminous. When- 

 ever possible, series of brains of each individual species 

 have been studied, and memoirs and catalogue com- 

 bined will furnish the finest contribution of the last 

 quarter of a century to the science of cerebral topo- 

 graphy and the analysis of the commissural systems of 

 the brain. 



The minor portion of the catalogue is contributed by 

 Mr. R. H. Burne, the assistant to the curator, and is based 

 on anatomical preparations fully equal to those through 

 which he has obtained distinction in the building 

 up of the collections. The Echinodermata, Annelida, 

 Arthropoda and Mollusca, with the Protoch ordata, Cyclo- 

 stomi, Pisces, Amphibia and Birds, have fallen to his lot ; 

 and he is responsible for the concluding sections on the 

 membranes, blood-vessels, and spinal cord. Accuracy of 

 detail is the distinctive feature of all that he has put on 

 record, and he has introduced a novel method of display. 

 He gives us new and welcome drawings of microscopic 

 sections of the ganglia of not a few invertebrate 

 forms and of the teleostean pallium, with a biblio- 

 graphy sufficient for the first needs of those who may 

 desire further information. He has played a good 

 second to his distinguished co-author, and a magnificent 

 volume has been produced, worthy the best associations 

 of the great institution whence it originates, the 



1 Pp. 465-466, in which the author elaborates this [heme, are fascinating 

 reading. 



