November i8, 1909] 



NA TURE 



63 



position and properties, as if a comprehensive book 

 of reference ^cr^ being- written. 



Tlie faults of the book are the faults of a university 

 professor when dealing- with a practical subject. As 

 soon as works-practice is touched on, the information 

 is not to be trusted. Thus, in the chapter on the pre- 

 paration of alloys, a somewhat misleading diagram is 

 Siven of a melting furnace for crucibles, and the 

 statement is made that the maximum charge for a 

 crucible in such a furnace scarcely exceeds loo kilo- 

 grams. To show the inexactness of this, it is 

 enough to mention that at the Royal Mint crucibles 

 containing- more than i8o kilogrammes of standard 

 silver have been in use for many years, and even 

 larg-er crucibles are used in mints abroad. 



The merits of the volume have already been suffi- 

 ciently indicated. It is a pleasure to read the book. 

 It can hardly fail to fascinate many of the students 

 into whose hands it will come as a task, and it will be 

 useful to those engaged in the industries as an aid 

 in understanding the numerous articles and papers on 

 alloys which appear in scientific periodicals every day. 



T. K. R. 



Ol'EM-AIR STUDIES AT HOME AND ABROAD. 

 (i) The Young Naturalist. .\ Guide to British 



.Animal Life. By W. P. Westell. Pp. xv + 476. 



(London : Methuen and Co., 1909.) Price 6s. 



(2) Nature. By J. H. Crawford. Pp. x -1-242. 

 (London : Swan Sonnenschein and Co., 1909.) 

 Price 55. 



(3) Victorian Hill and Dale. A Series of Geological 

 Rambles. By Dr. T. S. Hall. Pp. x-t-i6o. 

 (.Melbourne : Thomas C. Lothian, 1909.) Price 3s. 



(i)' I ■'HE distinguishing feature of this survey of 

 -L the British fauna is its comprehensiveness. 

 With the exception of marine fish, there is no large 

 order that does not come in for comment. The mam- 

 mals, birds, fresh-water fish, and Lepidoptera — the 

 most popular groups — are allotted most space, and 

 are evidently more familiar to the author than the 

 remainder. In spite of certain drawbacks, of which 

 we shall have something to say, this book is a most 

 suitable handbook for a boy or girl who is interested 

 in animal life. The contents are arranged in ordinal 

 f;vshion, and no attempt is made to deal with the asso- 

 ciations of animals characterising field, moor, or lake, 

 nor are there practical suggestions for the capture, 

 maintenance, or preservation of specimens. There 

 are, however, accounts of the habits and distinctive 

 features of the commoner British animals that should 

 be read with interest by young naturalists, and the 

 wealth of clear photographs makes the book a most 

 attractive one. 



In dealing with the more familiar orders, the 

 author's observations are evidently based on personal 

 obser\'ation, but one can scarcely hope to extend this 

 enviable acquaintance to all the groups, and accord- 

 ingly there are occasions when the experience of 

 others has to be drawn upon. L'nfortunately, in these 

 instances the authorities relied upon by Mr. Westell 

 are not unimpeachable, and have been the cause of 

 NO. 2090, VOL. 82] 



several misstatements. Thus, on p. 456, in speaking 

 of the severing of a limb or part of the body, the 

 author concludes, "This is known as autonomy." 

 We can hardly believe the author responsible for 

 mistaking the second "t" for an "n." But in other 

 cases the authority is clear. On pp. 291-5 there is 

 a description of the structure and life of fish that 

 bristles with misleading or inaccurate statements :— 

 "the fish's gills are its lungs"; "'a fish need only 

 open its mouth and the water pours in"; "the heart 

 has two cavities " ; " the fins along the back and the 

 stomach are especially useful in keeping the body 

 upright"; "probably the sense of taste and touch are 

 only verv dull"; "fishes (with one or two exceptions 

 of tropical fishes) are hatched from eggs which are 

 laid by the parent in very large number." Why the 

 author should have trusted to such information in- 

 stead of going to first-hand authorities we do not 

 understand. The account of the moUusca contains 

 several mistakes. Pearls are said to be due to "a 

 grain of sand or other hard substance. Cephalopods 

 "have no outside shell, the principal eight-armed 

 Cephalopod is the Argonaut or Nautilus." This con- 

 fusion is rendered still more distressing by a later 

 note (p. 439), in which the " Paper Nautilus or Argo- 

 naut " is called "Nautilus pompilius," whilst the shell 

 of the "common Nautilus" is figured and described 

 as a distinct structure. There is a similar confusion 

 between the acorn barnacle and Lepas, the goose- 

 barnacle. The nomenclature, in fact, is inconsistent. 

 On p. 49 the Linnean system is justified, and yet 

 throughout the book confusion is continually arising 

 through the want of its use. What are flat burying 

 beetles or museum beetles? What is the Noonday 

 Fly? Even Mr. Westell seems to become confused 

 by this absurd nomenclature, for he tells his readers 

 to look for the " brine shrimp " in the sea ; and evi- 

 dently believes in some abstraction called the real 

 shrimp (p. 316). But for thorough confusion of 

 thought, take the statements that the Brittle Star 

 "ably practises (sic) this remarkable habit (of frag- 

 mentation) for it casts away in regular and methodic 

 manner certain parts of its body during its early life," 

 or this one of the house fly, "accused often unjustly 

 of disseminating disease, it seems that according to 

 Sir James Crichton Browne, there is much truth in a 

 good deal of what has been stated." 



The style of the author really needs a little chasten- 

 ing. "Vasty deep"; "Denizens of the deep"; "I 

 having made observations upon the insects but not 

 them upon me" (p. 423); "despite the hue and cry 

 which one hears so frequently as to the dense human 

 population that this country harbours," p. 169 (as 

 though humans were a kind of vermin), are a few ex- 

 pressions that should have been cut out. We know 

 how easy is the task of picking out weak places in 

 the work of others, and direct attention to these flaws 

 in a very useful book in the hope that a new edition 

 (which certainly ought to be called for) may be even 

 better than this one. References might then be 

 Efiven, in the text, to the attractive illustrations. 

 This is a very necessary, even an essential matter, 

 for the adder, e.g., is figured on p. 20, and the de- 



