434 
NATURE 
[ MARCH 7, 1907 
a visit to Robert Brown just before his death. ‘‘ He 
tallked quite calmly and cheerfully, recalling the days 
when he had sat in the same room in company with 
Banks, Solander and Dryander, and telling her where 
each of them used habitually to sit.’’ There is, too, 
a striking letter (ii., 53), written apparently before 
Hofmeister’s discoveries had reached him, in which 
Sir Charles argues for the connection of the Exogens 
with the Cryptogams by means of the Conifers, and 
(ii., 56) for the common nature of spores and pollen- 
grains. 
In 1866 he noted down (ii., 214) the influences which 
he believed to guided his development. Four 
books are mentioned :—(1) Plutarch’s ** Lives,’’? which 
he valued as teaching magnanimity; (2) Hallam’s 
“Constitutional History ’’; (3) Lyell’s *‘ Principles ”’; 
(4) Lindley’s ‘“‘ Natural System of Botany.’’ The two 
men of whose influence he speaks are Sir William 
Napier, ‘‘ a great genius and a noble though singular 
character,’’ and Sir George Napier, with whom he 
stayed at the Cape, ‘‘ one of the most interesting and 
most profitable years of my life.” 
He died in 1886, aged seventy-seven; few men can 
have lived a long life more kindly and wisely. 
1k 1D); 
have 
HAILEYBURY- NATURAL HISTORY 
LECTURES. 
Life and Evolution. By F. W. Headley. 
277; illustrated. (London: 
1906.) Price 8s. net. 
HIS well-illustrated and attractive volume, accord- 
ing to the preface, is the final form assumed 
by a series of lectures delivered before the members 
of the Haileybury Natural Science Society, the great 
majority of whom are scholars at the famous Hert- 
fordshire school. From the very nature of the case 
it aims, therefore, at being intelligible to readers 
unprovided with a large store of scientific knowledge 
of their own. It will be equally self-evident that it 
does not lay claim to be a new gospel. Rather is it 
an attempt, if we rightly understand its purport, to 
place before that section of the public which possesses 
a thirst for scientific knowledge a clear idea of the 
general structure and mutual relationships of the 
leading groups of animals and their adaptations to 
various modes of life, to show in what respects 
animals resemble and differ from plants, and how to 
distinguish between these two great primary groups 
of organisms, and, finally, to attempt a solution of 
the riddle of the evolution of organic life and of the 
human intellect. 
The task of course, a heavy one, and one 
bristling with difficulties, but if we take into con- 
sideration the class to whom he is specially appeal- 
ing and the amount of space available, we consider 
that Mr. Headley has come well out of the ordeal. It 
is not to be supposed that all his opinions will be 
accepted by each one of his readers, but in most 
cases, at any rate, he has expressed himself on de- 
1 Fortunately for himself he read it in Langhorne’s translation, so that 
he could peruse and re-peruse it so as almost to know it by heart. A boy of 
thirteen would never have got the essential good of the book if he had 
known it only in the original. 
NO. 1949, VOL. 75 | 
Pp. xvi+ 
Duckworth and Co., 
is, 
batable points with fairness and moderation, and he 
does not assume the character of an ex parte advocate. 
The great test of a work of this nature is whether 
it suits the taste of the class of readers for whom it 
is intended, and in the few instances in which we 
have been able to put this test to the proof the verdict 
is favourable. The style and mode of expression are 
almost everywhere good and interesting, and in all 
cases free from unnecessary technicalities, while the 
prevailing tone is that of a thoughtful lover of nature 
in all its forms. The illustrations speak for them- 
selves. 
Passing over the first chapter, which is devoted to 
the relationships and dissimilarities of plants and 
animals, attention may be directed to certain specula- 
tions in the second chapter—on the sea and its in- 
habitants—with respect to sedentary animals, which 
are regarded as having reverted to a semi-plant-like 
mode of existence. It is pointed out that such 
sedentary animals are much more numerous in the 
shore-waters than elsewhere. This the author believes 
is due to the movements of tides and currents, which 
bring ample food supplies without the need of any 
active exertion on the part of the recipients. How 
comes it, then, that almost all classes of sedentary 
animals are also well represented in the ocean- 
abysses, where no such free distribution of supplies 
takes place? The answer to the puzzle is, in the 
author’s opinion, to be found in the fact that many 
of the abyssal organisms are stalked, and that they 
obtain nutriment by possessing the power of bending 
these stalks, and thus being endowed to a certain 
limited degree with motion. The proof that this 
power exists has, however, in many cases yet to be 
demonstrated. 
the suggestion is that they may be fed by a rain of 
organic débris descending from the surface-waters. 
Gills and lungs form the subject of the 
chapter, in which reference is made to the occurrence 
in that hobgoblin-like fish, the Malay Periophthalmus, 
of an accessory breathing organ in the tail, by the 
aid of which the creature is enabled to spend much 
of its time out of water. The various phases of the 
respiratory function are shown to form an excellent 
instance of evolution, diffused breathing by the whole 
surface of the body giving place first of all to localised 
respiration by means of gills, and these again yield- 
ing to lung-breathing in the more active terrestrial 
forms, some of which have reverted, however, to the 
water, the ancestral home of all animal life. 
Reptiles and their kin and the evolution of the 
reptile into the bird are discussed at length in the 
next two chapters. In seeking to find an explanation 
for the tendency to union between bones originally 
distinct, which forms such a marked feature of the 
avian skeleton, Mr. Headley suggests that the fusion 
of the tarsus with the long bones of the lower part of 
the legs has taken place in order to strengthen the 
automatic, pulley-like action of tendons which enables 
a bird to remain securely perched while asleep. The 
suggestion seems well founded. Later on we are 
told how the peculiar, saddle-like articulations of the 
cervical vertebrae enable birds to bend their necks in 
a ee ee eee 
With regard to polyzoans and corals, — 
third — 
