NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS. 37 



that volume bears date 1878, and so when we put it into the 

 hands of a student we find ourselves presenting him with a book 

 in which not a word is said, nor could have been said, of Prof. 

 Huxley's ingenious classification of the gills of the Crustacea. 

 Well may the writer of systematic anatomical works stand by the 

 rapidly growing stream of zoological literature and cry with 

 Horace's peasant, " Labitur et labetur in omne volubilis aevum." 



But, were he to stand and wait for the stream to flow past, we 

 should never be able to hail the appearance of a book like that 

 in hand ; one in which there is no speculation, and too little 

 of the author himself, but one which has, at any rate, this 

 considerable recommendation, that it exhibits throughout that 

 principle which John Hunter has, for this country, made for ever 

 classical, and which the College of Surgeons as their conservators 

 have brought to a point of perfection which is the admiration of 

 comparative anatomists ; the method, that is, of dealing, from the 

 lowest to the highest, with that set of organs which, for each, 

 subserves the same function. 



In a day when embryology and phytogeny have given a some- 

 what different aspect to morphology, it is well, if only for the 

 purposes of rivalry, that a teacher should still be found who 

 insists without reservation on the importance of complete 

 comparison. 



Cameos from the Silver-land ; or, the Experiences of a Young 

 Naturalist in the Argentine Republic. By Ernest William 

 White, F.Z.S. Vol.1. London : Van Voorst. 1881. 



This volume of 412 pages contains a certain amount of infor- 

 mation, conveyed in the "tallest" language. It is difficult to 

 conceive why these sketches should have been termed " Cameos," 

 nor does the writer give any clue to his reasons for such a title. 

 The work appears to be intended as a kind of handbook to the 

 Argentine Republic, which, according to the accompanying map, 

 includes the whole of the Pampas, Patagonia, and even Tierra 

 del Fuego and the outlying islands as far as the western exit of 

 the Straits of Magellan (!) — an overlapping of the territory of 

 Chili which will scarcely be acknowledged by that Republic. The 

 various provinces comprised in these vast claims, which extend 



