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189 
a single group, once for all? Much space might also have 
been gained for questions by giving what corresponds to 
a title-page only on the first card. Thoroughly sys- 
tematic names, based on a sézg/e principle now in 
use, ought alone to be employed in elementary teach- 
ing. “Argentic chloride,” “silver chloride,” “ corrosive 
sublimate,” are names of three quite distinct kinds which, 
we have found, the author employs without comment. A 
nomenclature card would indeed be a valuable pretix to 
the series. It would also be an advantage to append 
answers to all the questions. 
Clearly expressed rules, and good examples of the mode 
of applying them, are so obviously useful to students, 
that it only remains to add that Mr. Woodward has done 
his work well. 185 Jo wile 
Agricultural Engineering.— Der Cultur-Ingenieur. Her- 
ausgegeben von Dr, F. W. Dunkelberg. (Brunswick, 
1869.) 
THIS periodical, a quarterly journal in its second year of 
publication, professes to deal with all questions of applied 
science affecting agriculture. The papers contained in 
the present number are mostly of a thoroughly practical 
character. They treat of such matters as the testing of 
steam-engines at agricultural exhibitions, the examination 
and adjustment of levelling instruments, the cause of 
boiler explosions, the mean velocity of water in canals 
and rivers, and the usefulness and profitableness of various 
machines for agricultural purposes. One paper gives a 
description of English locomotives for use on ordinary 
roads. ‘The journal is well got up and amply illustrated. 
The Microscope and its Use. .By Dr. H. Hager. (Das 
Mikroskop und seine Anwendung. (Berlin: Springer.) 
THIS little work gives, in less than a hundred pages, first, 
a brief account of the microscope and of microscopic 
appliances ; secondly, a still more rapid description of 
common microscopic objects. It is, in fact, very much 
like our own “Carpenter on the Microscope,” on a very 
reduced scale. The first part is written with great sense, 
and very much to the purpose. We are not surprised that 
the little work has received in Germany the unusual honour 
of a third edition. 
Freshwater Radiolaria.—Ox some Freshwater Rhizopoda, 
new or little known. By William Archer. (Quarterly 
ne of Microscopical Science, July and October, 
1869. 
Mr. ARCHER, of Dublin, who is well known as one of 
the contributors to Pritchard’s “‘ Infusoria,” and a careful 
observer, has for the last two or three years chronicled in 
the Proceedings of the Dublin Microscopical Club, pub- 
lished in the Quarterly Fournal of Microscopical Science, 
the occurrence of Radiolarian-like Rhizopods in the moor- 
pools of Ireland. At the end of last year Dr. Focke, of 
Bremen, described and figured a few of the same forms, 
bearing a likeness to some which have been considered as 
belonging to the genus Actinophrys, or sun-animalcules, 
of Ehrenberg. Mr. Archer has at length published the 
description of his new species, with full illustrations in 
three folding coloured plates. Many of these new fresh- 
water Radiolarians, like the marine forms which they ap- 
pear to represent in fresh water, carry siliceous spicules ; 
they are mostly globular, and have a capsule surrounded 
by protoplasmic matter, which is drawn out into very long 
and delicate threads or rays, whilst the spicules are aggre- 
gated so as to form a loose sort of skeleton. In one large 
species Mr. Archer found several globular capsules united 
in one individual (Kaphzdiophrys). The contents of the 
capsules are coloured green in some instances, in other 
species they are red, or colourless. These most interest- 
ing animals are found only in moor-pools, and are, there- 
fore, not to be got at by every observer. It is, therefore, 
very curious that besides Mr, Archers and Dr. Focke’s 
publications in this year, Dr. Richard Greef, of Bonn, 
should also have turned his attention to them, without 
being aware of Mr. Archer’s work. In No. 3 of Max 
Schultze’s Archiv for this year, Dr. Greef has a paper 
and plates, describing some species and genera zdentical 
with those of Mr. Archer, who, however, has precedence 
by some months. The fresh-water Radiolaria, it has been 
suggested, stand in the same relation to the more exube- 
rant and highly developed marine Radiolaria, as do the 
fresh-water Hydrozoa represented by Hydra to the much 
more numerous, more brilliant, and varied marine Hydrozoa. 
BIR, Ie, 
The Annals and Magazine of Natural History.—No. 24. 
December, 1869. (Taylor and Francis.) 
THE last number of this journal contains several valuable 
papers, of which the most important is undoubtedly 
Mr. Carter’s description of the Development of Sovas- 
trum Spinulosum, which will be read with interest by 
botanists. Dr. Leconte, of Philadelphia, contributes a 
list of beetles collected in Vancouver's Island by Messrs. 
H. and J. Matthews, with descriptions of a consider- 
able number of new species. Dr. Leconte does not cite 
any of the species from the same locality described 
by Mr. Francis Walker in Lord’s “ Naturalist in Van- 
couver’s Island and British Columbia ;” in all probability 
he will find that some of his supposed new species are 
already described.—Mr. T. Vernon Wollaston publishes a 
continuation of his paper on the Coleoptera of St. Helena, 
the general results of which we propose to give on its 
completion.—A third entomological paper is by Mr. Fred. 
Smith, on the Parasitism of Whipiphorus paradoxus, in 
answer to a communication in the November number by 
Mr. Andrew Murray, in which that gentleman maintained 
that the larva of AApiphorius, which is always found in 
the cells of wasps, is a parasite rather in the classical than 
in the natural history sense of the term; that is to say, 
that it merely lives upon the food furnished to the wasp- 
larva, and does not feed upon the substance of the latter. 
In opposition to this view, Mr. Smith cites observations 
made by himself and by the late Mr. F. Stone, which 
show clearly enough that the larva of Rhzpiphorus is not 
hatched until the wasp-larva is approaching maturity, that 
it speedily fastens upon its companions, and appropriates 
the latter’s materials with so much avidity as to attain its 
full growth in about forty-eight hours.—Other purely 
zoological papers are—A description of a new British 
spider belonging to the genus era, by Mr. John Black- 
wall; descriptions of two new species of sun birds from 
the Island of Hainan, by Mr. Robert Swinhoe; and a 
notice of some nondescript bones in the skull of osseous 
fishes, by Mr. George Gulliver. The bones referred to in 
the last-mentioned paper are to be found in the head of 
the codfish at the hind part of each post-frontal bone. 
There is one on each side of the head, and their form is 
that of a sub-conical cup. The author calls them exfost- 
Jrontal ossicles. Similar limpet-shaped ossicles hitherto 
unnoticed occur in other parts of the head.—In a joint 
paper on the Nomenclature of the Foraminifera (the thir- 
teenth of a long-continued series), Messrs. Jones, Parker, 
and Kirkby describe the extraordinarily varied forms under 
which a species, to which they attribute the name of 
Trochammina pusilla, presents itself. These forms, which 
have of course received a great number of different names, 
are represented by the authors on a plate; they occur 
fossil in almost all formations from the Permian to the 
Tertiaries, and some of them are living in our present 
seas.—In a short contribution to Jurassic Palzontology, 
Mr. Ralph Tate indicates the necessity for breaking up 
the great genus Ceréthium, and notices that the genus 
Kilvertia, established in 1863 by Lycett, at the expense of 
Cerithium, is identical with /ve/éssa, Piette (1861), of 
which he describes a new British Liassic species. He 
also proposes the formation of a new genus, Cryptaulax, 
for another group of Cerzthza, in which the aperture more 
resembles that of Chemmnztzia, and the posterior canal is 
concealed by the_ outer lip. 
