Aug. 25, 1870] 
or the imperfect way in whichthey can be examined. The 
difficulties which have hitherto lain in the path of osteo- 
logical investigation of the skeletons of different animals, 
have been admirably overcome by the workmen under 
Mr. Flower’s direction. The skeletons are mounted upon 
very light frames of iron, and the limbs are so articulated 
with the body as to be removeable on the extraction of a 
single rivet, and their several segments can be detached 
with equal facility. The head can be removed, and even 
its interior be examined, whilst the several vertebrz can 
be separately taken off without disturbing the position and 
arrangement of the skeleton generally. The advantages 
of this mode of mounting for the purposes of comparison 
and investigation to the real worker are simply incalculable. 
The mode in which the preparing has been done reflects 
the highest credit on Mr. Mosely and those who assisted 
him. We must call attention in particular to a wonderful 
skeleton of a pike, weighing 32lb., in which every bone 
has been cleaned and re-attached with wonderful 
dexterity. The fish was presented by Mr. Petre, of West- 
wick, Norwich, at the instance of Mr. Frank Buckland. 
The council of the Zoological Society have given a very 
fine adult specimen of the recently discovered lang-tailed 
Chinese deer (Elaphurus davidianus), with one of the 
very rare and remarkable South African “ Aard wolf,” or 
Proteles. 
Mr, Flower is gradually performing a great service to 
all comparative anatomists by carrying out the original 
idea of Hunter, and placing side by side the same organ 
as it presents itself in a great variety of animals. By 
such a method many points are seized in a moment, 
which it is impossible for the most careful describer to 
render into words, or for the most diligent reader to grasp, 
whilst likenesses and correspondences hitherto unrecog- 
nised everywhere make themselves apparent. This year 
we observe that a large number of specimens of the intes- 
tinal organs and of the larynx have been mounted, the plan 
pursued with the latter organ being similar in all ; on one 
side the bones, cartilages, and ligaments being displayed, 
whilst on the other the muscles are exquisitely dissected. 
The Teratological Division, or that treating of malfor- 
mations and monstrosities, has scarcely received the 
scientific attention it deserves, whilst the specimens that 
have accumulated in the College’are very numerous, and 
we are glad to observe that the work of their arrangement 
has been entrusted to so laborious and intelligent a 
worker as Mr. B. T. Lowne, whose work on the Blowfly 
is, we have no doubt, in the hands of many of our readers. 
In regard to the Dermatological collection it may be 
remarked that the past year has been signalised by the 
institution of what may be termed an entirely new de- 
partment of the collection ; for such illustrations of diseases 
of the skin as the Museum formerly contained were very 
limited in number, and were incorporated in the general 
Pathological series. Moreover, the great majority of the 
morbid appearances presented by the skin cannot be shown 
in an anatomical museum by actual specimens, but re- 
course must be had to models and drawings to perpetuate 
and illustrate their characters, and no collection of such 
objects had hitherto been formed in the College. 
When the Professorship of Dermatology was founded 
and endowed last year by Mr. Erasmus Wilson, it appeared 
necessary that the means of illustrating the lectures should 
NATURE 
331 
also be provided ; and for this purpose, as well as for the 
general advancement of the study of the subject, Mr. 
Wilson has presented to the College an extensive collec- 
tion of drawings, casts, and models of cutaneous diseases, 
the greater proportion of the latter having been recently 
executed with great artistic excellence and fidelity by M. 
Baretta from patients in the Hospital St. Louis at Paris. 
In order to provide space for the exhibition of this col- 
lection, and for any further additions that may be made 
to it, the council determined upon the erection of a set of 
rail-cases around the upper gallery of the western museum, 
on the same plan as those put up in 1863 in the lower 
gallery. Their cost will be defrayed out of the proceeds 
of the Endowment of the Chair of Dermatology, so that 
the cases as well as the collection must be looked upon 
as the gift of Mr. Wilson to the College. 
Since the completion of the cases, Mr. Wilson has been 
engaged in arranging the preparations in systematic order, 
and in preparing a descriptive catalogue of the whole 
collection, the manuscript of which is now ready for the 
press. 
PSYCHOLOGY IN ENGLAND 
La Psychologie Anglaise Contemporaine (Ecole Expert- 
mentale). Par Th. Ribot. (Paris: Ladrange, 1870.) 
hes book expounds to French readers the psycho- 
logical doctrines of Mr. Jas. Mill, Mr. J. S. Mill, Mr. 
Herbert Spencer, Professor Bain, Mr. G. H. Lewes, and 
(more briefly) of Mr. S. Bailey, Mr. Morell, and Mr. 
Murphy. It ends with a short summary of general 
results won in the course of the great English psycho- 
logical movement marked by these names, and is prefaced 
by an introduction giving the author’s view of the develop- 
ment of the sciences, and particularly the science of 
psychology. For the English thinkers, also, of another 
type (Hamilton, Whewell, Mansel, Ferrier), he seems to 
promise to do next what he does here for those whom he 
classes together as making, after the proper tradition of 
English thought, an experimental school. 
The appearance in France of such a work, at the pre- 
sent moment, has a real significance. Taken along with 
M. Taine’s new and weighty contribution to psycho- 
logical science (De ?Jntelligence), and with another work 
or two, it means that the tide of thought is there turning, 
if it has not already turned. Between the contempt of 
M. Comte and the airy attentions of M. Cousin, it has 
fared indifferently with psychology in France for more 
than a generation. Ata time, when in England, a num- 
ber of active inquirers, continuing the work of last 
century, have been pushing forward psychological research 
in a spirit of strict science ; when in Germany a number 
more, reclaimed from high priori roads of speculation to 
habits of careful introspective search, or starting from a 
physiological base, have been vying with their English com- 
peers in efforts to resolve the subtle complicacy of psychical 
states, and thence to explain the most obscure and varied 0 
all growths ; the philosophical mind of France has been 
mostly turned to the history and criticism of opinion, con- 
tent to retail the cut-and-dried psychology of an earlier day. 
From this state of things the original scientific inquiry 
of M. Taine is a refreshing departure, and M. Ribot’s 
work, though in the main expository merely, has its face 
