April i6, 1908] 



NATURE 



557 



it seems to us to be peculiarly successful, as we would 

 expect from one writing out of full knowledge and 

 with strong enthusiasm, and what he has to say 

 may be profitably read by many besides the laity. 

 Besides descriptions of the various constituents of 

 the plankton — crustaceans, rotifers, infusorians, algae, 

 and so on — Dr. Zacharias gives an account of methods 

 of study, of the relations of the plankton to environ- 

 mental conditions, of the origin of new species and 

 varieties by isolation, of the inter-relations of plants 

 and animals, of the application of hydrobiology to 

 fisheries, and of the pioneer station at Plon. 



(j) Prof. K. Giesenhagen deals with a subject more 

 difficult than those of the two preceding volumes — 

 namely, fertilisation and heredity m the vegetable 

 kingdom. He begins with the phenomena in their 

 simplest terms in the green algae, and works gradually 

 upwards through moss and fern to phanerogams, not 

 forgetting the by-fl'aths of parthenogenesis and vegeta- 

 tive multiplication. The point about his treatment is 

 that he uses the facts as a basis for a discussion of 

 the deep problems of heredity, such as those raised 

 and in part solved by the discoveries of Mende! and his 

 successors. 



(4) Prof. Paul Gisevius has compressed into a small 

 volume what every educated person should know about 

 plants, and there is a flavour of intellectual " pem- 

 mican " in the result. He deals first with the struc- 

 ture of plants, both inside and outside; he then dis- 

 cusses nutrition and respiration, constructive meta- 

 bolism, and the migration of material; he leads us 

 from seed and seedling to the flowering, fruiting 

 and withering; he takes a survey of the vegetable 

 kingdom, and throws the light of the past on the 

 [iresent ; and he ends up with the phenomena of repro- 

 duction and with breeding experiments. It seems to 

 us that he attempts too much, carrying terseness to 

 an extreme, but his work is well done. 



(5) Prof. Ludwig von Graff supplies a masterly 

 introduction to the study of parasitism among animals. 

 Without overwhelming us with details, he takes us 

 into the heart of the subject, and the style of the 

 book is a model. Von Graff has much that is ex- 

 tremely interesting to relate — for parasitology has 

 made great advances of recent years — and his dis- 

 cussion of such themes as the origin of the parasitic 

 habit and the influence of parasitism on the parasite 

 is very instructive. Admirable too are the tabular 

 summaries of life-histories. The appalling list of 

 human parasites, based on Braun's well-known 

 treatise, reaches a total of 129, and this number must 

 be greatly increased, since in not a few cases several 

 species are counted as one. 



(6) In some ways the most striking volume in this 

 bundle of primers is that in which Prof. Max Verworn 

 deals with " the mechanism of psvchical life." It 

 consists of five lectures on the physiological aspects of 

 mental processes, and the author has been well advised 

 li) leave them with the vividness of oral discourse. 

 He deals with the relations of mind and body (the 

 dualism of which he regards as a superannuated fic- 

 tion), with the processes, e.g. fatigue-changes, in the 

 nervous elements, with the dissimilatory stimuli that 



NO. 2007, ^'OI-. 77] 



pass ii?cessantly through the intricate maze of nerve- 

 fibres and ganglion-cells, with the fascinating pheno- 

 mena of sleep and dreaming, and with the puzzles of 

 suggestion and hypnosis. More, perhaps, than in 

 regard to the other little books which we have noticed 

 is there room here for difference of opinion, but all 

 will agree that the author presents his view of 

 psychical life with masterly clearness. It must be 

 clearly noted that he refrains from giving his facts 

 any philosophical setting, he argues neither for 

 materialistic nor for spiritualistic interpretation, he 

 aims at a physiological analysis of the sequences with 

 which we are all familiar, and he does not conceal 

 that his title expresses a scientific ideal rather than 

 an actual achievement. J. A. T. 



OUR BOOK SHELF. 



Index of Archaeological Papers (1665-1890). Edited 

 by G. L. Gomme. Pp. xi + 910. (London: A. Con- 

 stable and Co., Ltd., 1907.) Price 25^. net. 

 This volume is in effect an author-index to the papers 

 of archajological and kindred character published in 

 the journals of learned societies and elsewhere during 

 the twenty-five years prior to 189J. It includes 

 the contents of some ninety-four periodicals, amount- 

 ing in all to nearly 20,000 monographs under the 

 authors' names. An appendix supplies a list of the 

 titles which were found to have been omitted from the 

 main classification during its compilation. 



The papers of like characters which have appeared 

 from 1891 until the last year or so have already been 

 similarly treated in the annual index, published under 

 the auspices of the Congress of Archaeological Socie- 

 ties in union with the Society of Antiquaries. There 

 is thus placed before the student of to-day, as the 

 editor justly claims, a continuous index from the first 

 publications in the Philosophical Transactions of the 

 Royal Society down to the present time. This work is 

 henceforth as indispensable to the student of British 

 archaeology, in particular, as are the tables of log- 

 arithms, sines, and cosines to the mathematician. 

 The latter may be calculated, indeed, just as the 

 archaeological papers may be hunted out by individual 

 workers ; but those who in the past have wasted hours 

 and days in turning over the pages of twenty-five 

 times ninety-four volumes in search of their own quest 

 will be grateful to Mr. Gomme and his helpers for 

 their patient work, and for the completeness of the 

 result. 



This index includes within its scope, not only the 

 archseology of the British Isles, but archaeological 

 fragments from many countries. Thus we find Evans 

 (A. J.) on Albania, Birch, Budge, Petrie, Poole 

 (R. S.), and Renouf on the problems of Egypt, 

 Hogarth on inscriptions from Salonica, Ramsay on 

 the results of his explorations in Phrygia and western 

 Asia Minor, and so forth. The difficulty of editing such 

 a mass of different material must have been very 

 great, and the work laborious. Here and there we 

 notice the inclusion, whether accidental or intentional, 

 of papers which seem to us to be irrelevant; as, for 

 example, " The Writings and Influence of Coleridge " 

 (Redish), " The Height and Weight of Boys aged Four- 

 teen in Town and Country Schools." and other more or 

 less statistical writings, by Francis Galton. In other 

 cases where folklore is the subject, discrimination is 

 less easy ; and we certainly think that the editor has 

 been wise to incorporate writings of philological 

 character in cases where the author's material was 

 archseological. Thus M. Maspero on various 



