174 



NATURE 



[Dec. 24, 1885 



does not agree with the description. The curious pro- 

 boscis monke\-, SciiinopitJiccus {Nasalis) larvatus, the 

 Hornean gibbon, and several Indian and Ceylonesc 

 monkeys also furnish occasion for interesting notes, some 

 of which are novel. 



The greater part of the work is however devoted to 

 descriptions of shooting wild animals, such as may be 

 found in dozens of sporting books, or to accounts of the 

 ordinary incidents of travel, and the book is prolonged 

 by dissertations on the habits of animals, and on specific 

 characters. Here the author is fairly beyond his depth. 

 Chapter XX., for instance, is occupied with an account 

 of the habits of the Indian elephant. Nearly the whole 

 is compiled from Sanderson and other writers, and some 

 of the statements thus copied are of very doubtful accu- 

 racy. Thus Schlegel's view that the Ceylon elephant is 

 the same as the Sumatran, and distinguished from that 

 of India by the number of ribs and dorsal vertebrae — a 

 view long since shown by Falconer to be untenable — is 

 stated as if it were an undoubted fact. Before, however, 

 one has read much of Mr. Hornaday's work, it is manifest 

 that the author's zoological knowledge is superficial and 

 imperfect. At p. 14 the limestone of which the pyramids 

 are built is said to be "full of nummulitcs, little flat 

 echinoderms ; " and at p. 72 we read, '-unlike all other 

 antelopes, the female gazelle possesses horns." Of course 

 the author meant to write, unlike all other female ante- 

 lopes, but this does not prevent the statement being a 

 gross error ; it might have been expected that any one 

 writing on mammalia would be acquainted with such 

 conspicuous instances of horned female antelopes as are 

 offered by the eland and ory.x. 



It may naturally be inferred that the scientific names 

 applied to animals by Mr. Hornaday are no: always 

 correct. For instance, at p. 107 he records the shooting 

 in the Wynaad forest. Southern India, of a specimen of 

 Semnopitltecus Iciicoprytiinus, a kind of monkey peculiar 

 to Ceylon. The animal shot was probabl)- ^. pn'amus, of 

 which there is a fine South Indian specimen in the Agassiz 

 Museum, Cambridge, Mass., very possibly derived from 

 Mr. Hornaday's collection, but wrongly labelled 5. entclliis. 

 The circumstance that the Wynaad Senuuipithccus is 

 wrongly identified makes it probable that the Ceylon 

 monkeys called ^. lcucop)ym!uis (pp. 268 and 277) were 

 also S. priamits. 



One point in Mr. Hornaday's favour it is only just to 

 notice. His account, so far as it is possible to judge, is 

 truthful. He may err in citing authorities who are incor- 

 rect, but his own observations appear trustworthy, and 

 he records his failures with as much spirit as his successes. 

 The illustrations are numerous and as a rule fairly good, 

 if not always very artistic, but some of the views, and 

 especially that of Ootacamund, opposite p. 96, give a 

 poor, and not a very correct idea of the scenery. 



W. T. B. 



OUR BOOK SHELF 



Traite dc Zoolo^ie Medicak. Par Prof. R. Blanchard. 



Part I. (Paris: J. R. Bailli&re et fils, 1886.) 

 It is difficult to comprehend what is meant by medical 

 zoology, but it is easy to take in the object and design of 

 this manual. These are to give a general sketch of the 

 structure and classification of the various forms of animal 



life, and to call the attention in some detail of medical 

 men or students to those species, which are either useful 

 or injurious to man. It would thus aim at combining an 

 introduction to zoology with a short treatise on animal 

 parasites and some notes on economic zoology. We 

 doubt if in the pages of a small \-olume such a treatment 

 of this vast subject could be satisfactorily carried out, and 

 it speaks a great deal for the knowledge and tact of Prof 

 R. Blanchard, that he has, so far as we can judge from 

 this first part of his manual, succeeded in producing a 

 most readable work, which cannot fail of being attractive 

 to the class for whom it has been written, and the know- 

 ledge conveyed in which is fairly up to a modern point of 

 view. The manual is destined to form a volume of about 800 

 pages, illustrated by some 400 figures, which, for the most 

 part drawn from original sources, are fairly reproduced. 

 We note that at least in one case this reference to original 

 figures has not been without its advantages, for the figures 

 given by Saville Kent, in his manual of the Infusoria, of 

 Asthmatos ciliaris, Salisbury, not being exact, have been 

 misleading to others who have again reproduced them, and 

 there can be no doubt that this so-called parasite, thought 

 to be the cause of hay catarrh, is nothing but an isolated 

 epithelial cell of the naso-pharyngeal passages. The 

 references to authorities seem very complete, and the 

 second part is promised immediately with a title-page and 

 " les tables." May we hope that these latter will include 

 an index of the species referred to, or at least of those 

 the life-histories of which are given in detail. This 

 would immensely increase the usefulness of the volume. 



Microskopische Rcactionen. By Dr. Haushofer, Professor 

 am Technischen Hochschule, Munchen. (Braunsweig : 

 Vieweg und Sohn, 1883'.) 

 This book will be hailed both by the ordinary chemist, 

 and also by the geologist, and also by the pharmacist, as 

 a most valuable addition to our already very numerous 

 books on chemical reactions or analysis. The object of 

 the author has been to arrange in such a form as can be 

 used in the laboratory, tests and reactions of a great 

 number of substances wdiich may be performed on very 

 minute quantities, and the resulting bodies recognised by 

 their characteristic forms under the microscope. As the 

 author says, some substances are so easily recognised in 

 minute quantities even in the ordinary way, like iron, 

 iodine, or by spectroscopic means, as thalhum or lithium, 

 that recourse to the microscope is seldom necessary. 

 But in the majority of cases, where small quantities have 

 to be looked for, the style and general habitus of crystal 

 produced either in precipitates or by evaporation from 

 solutions, and especially their behaviour towards polarised 

 light, gives most valuable indications of the presence of 

 any metal, and where, as in most cases can easily be 

 done, se\'eral salts are in this way compared, the results 

 are quite as conclusive as with large quantities. The 

 substances treated of are metals, non-metals, and acids, 

 which are arranged for greater convenience of reference 

 in working, in alphabetical order. The principal and most 

 general forms of crystals are illustrated by 137 well-e,xe- 

 cuted woodcuts. 



A Bibliography of Protozoa, Sponges, Ca'lenterdta, and 

 Worms ; including also the Polyzoa, Brachiopoda, and 

 Tunicata, for the Years 1861-83. By D'Arcy W. 

 Thompson, B.A., Professor of Biology, University 

 College, Dundee. (Cambridge : The University Press, 

 18S5.) 

 The importance of the well-known " Bibliotheca Zoo- 

 logica" of Engehnann, with its immense and accurately- 

 compiled supplement by Victor Carus, to the biological 

 student need not be insisted on, and in the present work 

 we have this record carried out to 1S83 for the large groups 

 of the Protozoa, Sponges, Coelenterata, and Worms, includ- 

 ing also the Polyzoa, Brachiopoda, and Tunicata. This 



