August 24, 1905] 



NA rURE 



595 



OVR BOOK SHELF. 



The American Thoroughbred. By C. E. Trevathan. 



(American Sportsman's Library.) Pp. i.x + 495; 



illustrated. (New York : The Macmillan Company ; 



London : Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1905.) Price 



85. 6d. net. 

 From the point of view of the naturalist, the interest 

 of this volume (which is no doubt an admirable guide 

 to everything connected with racing on the other 

 side of the Atlantic) is concentrated on the author's 

 remarfcs with regard to the origin and development 

 of the American thoroughbred. As a matter of fact, 

 the racehorse in America lias been produced mainly 

 from an English ancestry, and is thus essentially of 

 the English type ; and the one matter for regret in 

 his treatment of the subject is that the author does 

 not appear to point out any features by which the 

 American breed may be distinguished from its Euro- 

 pean prototype, as it is difficult to believe that minor 

 differences between the two do not exist. The first 

 thoroughbred imported into America seems to have 

 been Bulle Rock, a horse foaled in England in 1718 

 and landed in Virginia in 1730. He was a scion of 

 the Darley Arabian, and had also the blood of the 

 Byerly Turk on the maternal side. The product of 

 native-bred mares (that is to say, mainly the de- 

 scendants of horses imported by the Spanish con- 

 querors, which were themselves largely of Barb 

 blood) by Bulle Rock formed the first foundation of 

 the modern American racing stock. Diomed was 

 another famous English stallion imported into 

 Virginia in the old days ; but long' after the definite 

 establishment of an American thoroughbred stock, 

 considerable improvement was effected therein by the 

 importation in 1836 of Glencoe, at that time a re- 

 nowned English horse. Glencoe was by Sultan, and 

 while in England sired Pocahontas, the dam of Stock- 

 well, Rataplan, and King Tom, the three greatest 

 sires the English turf has ever seen, and to one of 

 which almost every living English racehorse can 

 trace descent. With such a sire the future of the 

 American thoroughbred was assured. In conclusion, 

 we may congratulate the author on having added a 

 valuable volume to a valuable library, as well as on 

 having made an important contribution to our know- 

 ledge of the ancestry of the American racehorse. 



R. L. 



Tlic Story of Reptile Life. By W. P. Pycraft. 



Pp. 212. (London : George Newnes, Ltd., 1905.) 



Price IS. 

 This is a valuable addition to the " Newnes' Library 

 of Useful Stories." Mr. Pycraft not only writes in a 

 readable and entertaining style, but also has the happy 

 faculty of selecting precisely those facts which enable 

 him to expound general principles. The " Story of 

 Reptile Life " is not an elementary book of natural 

 history in the ordinary sense, but the outline of a 

 really scientific treatise which is not too technical to 

 be understood by a beginner. After some introductory 

 remarks explaining that he has to deal with a race 

 " whose glory has departed," the author proceeds to 

 describe each of the groups of surviving reptiles, with 

 some reference to their immediate ancestors as re- 

 vealed by fossils. In each chapter he treats first of 

 the most salient points in anatomy, and then proceeds 

 to select a few of the more important living species 

 for detailed notice. The account of the existing 

 reptiles is followed by two chapters on domestic life 

 and reptilian liveries. The book then concludes with 

 chapters on the extinct flying reptiles, land reptiles, 

 and sea reptiles. We have detected no serious 

 errors, though it is difficult to accept all the author's 



NO. 1869, VOL. 72] 



speculations concerning some of the extinct forms, 

 and there are more misprints than ought to be. The 

 book also lacks adequate illustrations. It is, how- 

 ever, a worthy sequel to Mr. Pycraft's earlier 

 " stories " of birds and fishes, and we hope he may 

 soon complete the series by a final volume on the 

 mammals. 



Digest of the Evidence given before the Royal Com- 

 mission on Coal Supplies (1901-1905). Vol. i. 

 Pp. lxiv + 474. (London ; The Colliery Guardian 

 Co., Ltd.) Price 21s. 

 The Colliery Guardian has done useful work in pre- 

 paring this digest of the evidence given before the 

 Royal Commission on Coal Supplies. The 25,662 

 questions and answers contained in the official 

 minutes of evidence do not constitute an attractive 

 form of technical literature; but with the matter re- 

 arranged and classified under separate heads, and the 

 interrogative converted into the narrative form, it is 

 surprising to find what an enormous amount of valu- 

 able information has been got together. With the 

 exception of a brief historical introduction, no com- 

 ment is made on the evidence, and such additions as 

 the witnesses have found desirable when revising their 

 evidence have been printed as footnotes. The work 

 will be completed in three volumes, the subjects dealt 

 with in the first being the working of thin seams, 

 the limit of depth in mining, waste in w-orking and 

 coal-cutting machinery. There is a good index and 

 a useful bibliography of the subjects discussed. 

 Printed in large type, with the illustrations admirably 

 reproduced, the work forms a valuable companion to 

 the official Blue-books, and, indeed, from the point 

 of view of the mining student, may replace them 

 altogether. 



Wasps, Social and Solitary. By George W. Peckham 

 and Elizabeth G. Peckham. With an introduction 

 by John Burroughs. Pp. xv + 311; illustrated. 

 (London : Constable and Co., Ltd., 1905.) Price 

 6s. net. 

 This book is founded on a series of papers published 

 some years ago by the Wisconsin Biological Survey 

 under the title of " Instincts and Habits of the Soli- 

 tary Wasps," with much new matter added. It is a 

 record of very patient field observations on the lines 

 with which Fabre's well-known " Souvenirs Ento- 

 mologiques" (constantly referred to, and compared by 

 our present authors with their own) have made us 

 familiar. 



The wasps discussed are chiefly those which provi- 

 sion their nests with caterpillars and other insects, or 

 with spiders ; and the genera noticed are Vespa, 

 Ammophila, Sphcx, Rhopalum, Odynerus, Aporus, 

 Crabro, Benibex, Cerceris, Philanthus, Trypoxylon, 

 Pompilus, Tachytes, Chlorion, Pelopoeus, Astata, 

 Oxybelus, &c., all of which (Sphex, Bembex, and 

 Chlorion excepted) include British species. Many 

 persons are interested in the habits of insects who 

 have not time or opportunity to observe them for 

 themselves-, and to all such we heartily commend this 

 important work on the manners and customs of North 

 American wasps. W. F. K. 



X-Rays : their Employment in Cancer and other 



Diseases. By Richard J. Cowen. Pp. viii+126. 



(London : Henry J. Glaisher, 1904.) Price 2s. 6d. 



net. 



The author of this work states in his preface that he 



has made no effort to summarise all the valuable work 



which has been done in radiotherapy, and he has only 



tried to select such part as seems to him to be most 



likely to assist those practitioners in the therapeutic 



