172 



NA TURE 



[December 26, 1901 



Meissner's corpuscle, and of the rapidly accumulated 

 evidence of the same condition in that of the Pacinian^ 

 Herbstian, and even the Grandryian type. This dis- 

 covery, which we owe to Dogiel and his pupils, with 

 Timofeevv and Sala, imparts a new character to the tactile 

 body in all its forms ; and it marks one of the most 

 welcome and important advances in recent histological 

 work, demanding the attention of even the elementary 

 student. -If only it had been made in Cambridge \ 



OUR BOOK SHELF. 

 A Catalogue of the Lepidoptera of Ireland. By W. F. 



De Vismes Kane. With a coloured plate. Pp. xviii 



+ 166. (London: West, Newman and Co., 1901.) 



Price los. 

 Thk earliest catalogues of Irish Lepidoptera were pub- 

 lished by the Rev. Joseph (jreene and the Rev. A. R. 

 Hogan in 1854 and 1855 in the first two volumes of the 

 Natural History Review, but were merely tentative, not 

 only being very incomplete, but including many species 

 on the evidence of collections without history, or else taken 

 in localities where they were almost certainly introduced. 

 These authors enumerated 636 species as Irish. The 

 late Edwin Birchall's list, published in the Entomologists' 

 Monthly Magazine from 1S66 to 1868, was a much more 

 valuable work. Mr. Birchall enumerated 974 species, 

 though several included in the former lists were very 

 properly omitted. The list now before us, which was 

 originally published in the Entomologist from 1893 to 

 igoo, is carefully compiled, chiefly from original sources, 

 and brings down the subject to the present time ; but the 

 species are not numbered, and no comparison is made, as 

 should have been done, with the number given in Mr. 

 Birchall's catalogue. 



Mr. De Vismes Kane's book will be very useful to 

 entomologists visiting Ireland, or to those anxious to 

 study the character of the Irish fauna from a Lepi- 

 dopterous point of view. This is discussed by the 

 author in his introduction, in which he refers not only to 

 the comparative poverty of the fauna, both as regards 

 number of species and of individuals, even in comparison 

 with England, but states that the climate has been so un- 

 favourable to insects of late years that they have become 

 still scarcer than before, while some species, formerly 

 common in certain localities, have apparently disappeared 

 entirely. On p. xviii. the author alludes to his having 

 assisted Colonel Cooper in 1S85, 18S6 and 1887 in the 

 attempt to introduce various Continental species into 

 Sligo, experiments which, happily, failed. He adds : 

 "The attempted acclimatisation of such exotics as the 

 above I consider wholly unobjectionable, since if it were 

 successful, none of the species could have been mistaken 

 for natives." Among these "unobjectionable species" 

 was Porthetria (or Lifaris) disftar, the gipsy moth, the 

 introduction of which might have been one of the most 

 grievous calamities that has befallen Ireland for many 

 years ; and this gives us the opportunity of suggesting that 

 the (".overnment should absolutely prohibit the rearing of 

 any species in the open which are known to be destructive 

 abroad, notwithstanding their being rare or unknown in 

 the British Islands ; while a specially heavy penalty should 

 be attached to the introduction of living specimens in 

 any stage or for any purpose of such species as Liparis 

 dispar, as in the case of the not more destructive Colorado 

 potato beetle. What would Colonel Cooper have thought 

 if in a few years he had found that the whole of his 

 forests were lieing stripped of their leaves by the larv.c 

 of Liparis dispar, as might easily have been the case 

 had the climate and conditions proved favourable to the 

 insect ' 



NO. 1678, VOL. 65] 



An Atlas of the Medulla and Midbrain. By Florence 



R. Sabin. Pp. 123 ; 7 coloured plates, one black plate 



and 52 figures. (Baltimore, Md., U.S.A. : The 



Friedenwald Company, 1901.) Price 175 dollars. 

 This book consists of a detailed account of a model of 

 the medulla oblongata, pons Varolii and mesencephalon, 

 which was made in the anatomical laboratory of the 

 Johns Hopkins University by a reconstruction in wax 

 of every alternate slice of a series of horizontal sections 

 of the brain-stem of a new-born babe. The sections 

 had been stained by the method of Weigert, so as tc 

 differentiate clearly the various nerve tracts, which are 

 so distinct, the one from another, at the time of birth. 



In the reconstruction only the important nerve tracts 

 and the compact masses of grey matter have been re- 

 presented, so that a glance at the model reveals the 

 exact shape and relations of the peculiarly-contorted 

 grey-masses and intertwining fibre-tracts, and enables 

 the student to form an accurate mental picture of the 

 most complicated and difficult region of the brain, such 

 as no other method of study can convey. 



Miss .Sabin has carried out the arduous and laborious 

 task of building the reconstruction in a manner so care- 

 ful and patently successful that for the first time an 

 accurate and trustworthy model is provided of a region 

 which so many people have hitherto attempted to 

 represent graphically by less tedious and correspondingly 

 more inaccurate means. 



The series of drawings representing the wax recon- 

 struction has been so happily executed by Mr. Max 

 Brodel that the model itself is hardly necessary. 



Miss Sabin's description is full and complete and is 

 illustrated by a large number of drawings both of the 

 horizontal sections, from which the model was built up, 

 as well as a "control series" of transverse sections of 

 another brain-stem of the same age. 



The view obtained of familiar structures is so novel, 

 and one's attention so riveted in the mental accommo- 

 dation, that the reader hardly looks for new observa- 

 tions. Nevertheless, the author has not only critically 

 summarised the current literature of the structure of the 

 medulla, pons and midbrain, but has also added to our 

 knowledge of these regions. 



The bibliography, which is intended for students, 

 attains the happy mean of being suflficient without being 

 bewildering. 



In a work which is so happily conceived and so admir- 

 ably executed there is little call for criticism. In perus- 

 ing the work we noticed only one misprint. One of the 

 figures (Fig. 50) has been misplaced : and it would be 

 of considerable advantage to the student if Plate viii. were 

 inverted so that the parts might be placed as they are 

 in the body (and in Plate iii.). 



This book and the model which it describes must 

 convince anyone, who has carefully studied the structure 

 of the brain-stem by means of the examination of sections, 

 of the inadequacy of the conception of this complex 

 region which he can acquire by such means ; and it will 

 be an invaluable aid for conveying to students an accu- 

 rate understanding of this important part of the bram, 

 which could not otherwise be acquired even by months 

 of careful study. G. E. S. 



Les Variations de Longcur des Glaciers. By Charles 



Rabot. Pp. 250. ((ieneva : (^.eorg and Co., 1900.) 

 Thk study of the variations in the lengths of glaciers is 

 one that has formed the object of investigation of many 

 workers, and as the subject, besides being of considerable 

 interest, is one in which exact information is very difficult 

 to secure, various opinions may be formed as to the 

 lengths of the periods of variations deduced. 



What is therefore wanted to render deductions more 

 exact is a great number of observations, spread over a 

 considerable interval of time, and the more the observa- 



