May 30, 1 901] 



NA TURE 



99 



to Lysiosquilla. The discussion of a true Squilla from 

 the coast of Yucatan by J. E. Ives in 1891, and the truly 

 valuable report on the Stomatopoda of the Albatross by 

 Dr. R. Payne Bigelow in 1894, were evidently unknown 

 to Dr. Young. Naturally, therefore, he leaves unnoticed 

 the species new or old in this or other orders recorded 

 by those two writers. Perhaps his attention was too 

 much concentrated on older essays, and, as these are 

 often much less accessible than modern treatises, such a 

 fault would deserve to be leniently regarded. It was, 

 indeed, with some eagerness that the present reviewer, 

 on first opening the book, turned to the excellent index 

 for the name Clypturus. Of this genus Miss Mary J. 

 Rathbun last year published a new species from Brazil. 

 That is not in the region with which Dr. Young's work 

 is concerned, but the genus was established long ago 

 by Stimpson in the Proceedings of the Chicago Academy 

 of Sciences, vol. i. p. 46, 1866, with repetition in the 

 Annals of the Lyceum of Natural History of New York, 

 vol. X. p. 120, 1S74, for a species "not uncommon among 

 the Florida Keys." Of this Dr. Young has nothing to 

 tell us. He mentions, indeed, two species of the same 

 family, Callianassa occidentalism Bate, and Callianassa 

 major. Say, but he was obviously not in a position to 

 inform his readers that Stimpson instituted the genus 

 Callichirus to receive Say's species, and he does not take 

 the trouble to tell them that Bate's species was founded 

 on a single leg, which left Bate himself doubtful as to its 

 generic position. 



On generic and specific names and lists of synonyms 

 there are various opinions, but most naturalists agree 

 that quoted names had better be quoted correctly, and 

 that an author would do well not only to verify his refer- 

 ences, but to give others a reasonable chance of verifying 

 them after him. Dr. Young's adhesion to these views 

 may be complete in principle, but is made very doubtful 

 hy his practice. The scope of his work scarcely required 

 a " synonymy " for the term Brachyura, still he has 

 been pleased to give one. It leads off with the informa- 

 tion that the word was adopted by ' Leach, Latreille, 

 Dana, Linne, Claus, Haswell, Miers,' Linne's name as a 

 centrepiece reminding one of those Welsh genealogies 

 which are reputed to have Adam halfway down the 

 ancestral line. Where and when Linnaeus changed his 

 Cancri Brachyuri into Brachyura we are not told, and 

 are never likely to be. The synonymy continues in 

 separate lines with ^Brachyura, H. Milne Edwards,' 

 "■ Cancri Brachyuri, Lamarck,' '' Klisiognatha, Fabricius,' 

 ' Tetrogonostona ' bracketed with ' Trigonosioma, Macleay.' 

 Here again we are not told when it was that Fabricius 

 changed the Kleistagnatha of his Supplementum into 

 Klistognatha, and as for the implied but ungiven refer- 

 ence to Smith's " Illustrations of the Zoology of South 

 Africa," there is confusion doubly confounded. In that 

 work McLeay adopts and uses the term Brachyura in 

 common, not only with half a dozen authors, but with half a 

 hundred or an indefinite number. He divides the group 

 into two tribes, and it is to these he assigns the names 

 above quoted, with the difference that he spells the first of 

 them correctly asTetragonostoma. In dealing with genera 

 and species Dr. Young shows no more ceremony than 

 with the higher groups. He attributes Podochela reisei 

 NO. 1648, YOL. 64] 



to Stimpson, A. Milne Edwards and Miers, though cer- 

 tainly the first and last write the specific name riisei, and 

 Stimpson says that it 'was found at the Island of St. 

 Thomas by Mr. A. H. Riise, after which indefatigable 

 investigator of West Indian natural history we have 

 named the species.' For the genus Ibacus, Leach, 

 Spence Bate's spelling, Ibaccus,'is adopted, and Leach is 

 accused of having written Ibachus. Cardiosoma carnifex 

 is attributed to Herbst, though he died long before the 

 species intended was assigned by Latreille to Cardisoma. 

 The young German naturalist, von Willemoes Suhm, who 

 died on the Challenger expedition, is uniformly referred 

 to as Suhn. The Pandalida; are defined without any 

 regard to the discovery published by CauUery and by 

 Caiman two years ago that the front feet in this family 

 had been misdescribed. And, as if all this were not 

 enough, the unhappy author re-introduces the name Uca 

 una, Marcgrave de Liebstad, without mentioning the year 

 1648 as the date of it, and in defiance, or perhaps in 

 ignorance, of all the trouble and accurate learning with 

 which Miss M. J. Rathbun has shown that this typical 

 West Indian species ought rightly to be called Ucides 

 cordatus (Linn). 



There are some interesting local names given. We are 

 told, for example, that Panulirus guttatits is called in 

 Barbados the "Guinea bird lobster," The pages have 

 satisfactory margins. There is room, therefore, for a 

 naturalist w^ith leisure, by supplementary notes, correc- 

 tions and verifications, to give the book a solid value. 



T. R. R. S. 



PRACTICAL INORGANIC CHEMISTRY. 



Praktikum des anorgaiiischen Chemikers. Von Dr. Emil 

 Knoevenagel. Pp. viii-l-332. (Leipzig: Veit and Co., 

 1901.) Mk. 7.80. 



THE fact that this book emanates from the Heidelberg 

 Laboratory and is dedicated to the memory of the 

 great teacher who first gave that laboratory its fame is cal- 

 culated to enlist the expectant attention of a critic. The 

 book purports to be an introduction to inorganic chemistry 

 on an experimental basis, and the object is to associate the 

 directions for practical work with adequate theoretical 

 e.xplanations of the phenomena involved. It is, in fact, a 

 blend of preparations, qualitative analyses, quantitative 

 experiments and theoretical chemistry. The plan of the 

 work as a whole is hardly describable, but some idea of 

 its detail may be gathered from the beginning. The 

 student is told to weigh out four grammes of caustic soda, 

 dissolve it in water and make up to 50 c.c. Then, paren- 

 thetically, he is asked to calculate the content of caustic 

 soda per litre, to express this in gramme molecules and 

 to say what is the normality. The student is next told 

 the solubility of caustic soda at 15° and 100'', and also in- 

 formed that the density can be used to measure the con- 

 centration. The boiling points of solutions of various 

 concentrations are given. The solution is now to be 

 tested with litmus and turmeric and also to be tasted. 

 Caustic soda is affirmed to be a strong base. A piece is 

 to be left exposed to the air ; it is said to deliquesce and 

 also to absorb carbon dioxide, a property of all strong 



