166 
NATURE 
[APRIL 18, 1912 
pride, the course may be commenced anywhere, 
and it will always lead to a study of all science. 
The only danger the author sees is that the teacher 
may specialise in some particular part that he likes 
and knows something about; unless this tempta- 
tion is resisted the course ceases to be general. 
In order that the pupil should be kept up-to-date, 
he must be urged to get the “bulletin habit,” 
and to obtain as fast as they appear the very 
numerous publications of the Department of 
Agriculture. 
Reaction was bound to set in sooner or later 
against the specialisation that has of late years 
characterised science teaching in many schools, 
and the book before us is one of the fruits of 
this reaction. Whilst we do not think that 
the author has found the final solution of the 
difficulties connected with the problem, we 
distinctly like his plan of utilising the experience 
of the child for all it is worth in the science 
course. 
OUR BOOKSHELF. 
South African Zoology. A Text Book for the use 
of Students, Teachers, and Others in South 
Africa. By Prof. J. BD: BP. Gilchrist. Pp: 
xi+ 323. (Cape Town and Pretoria: T. Maskew 
Miller. Pietermaritzburg and Durban: P. Davis 
& Sons, n.d.) Price 10s. 6d. net 
of 
“ec 
THE object this book, as stated in the 
preface, is to give illustrations of the 
South African fauna with special reference to the 
more familiar forms, for the benefit of students of 
nature study, as well as the agriculturalist.”” Dr. 
Gilchrist, therefore, has a fine opportunity of re- 
placing the hackneyed examples that have done 
duty so long in zoological teaching by Ethiopian 
types. In this, however, the book is disappoint- 
ing. The European Rana temporaria, Hydra, 
Bougainvillea, Aurelia, the liver-fluke, the beef 
tapeworm, the common Lumbricus terrestris, the 
cockroach, the snail Helix aspersa, the dogfish, 
rabbit, and pigeon are once again employed for 
descriptive purposes. 
It is a more pleasing task to point out the share 
devoted to African animals in this work. The 
section upon insects is in this respect the best in 
the book, the accounts of the locusts, termites, and 
ants being particularly interesting. 
briefly considered, but the spiders are summarily 
dismissed. An African crawfish, Palinurus, is 
described as an introduction to the Crustacea. The 
life-histories of certain African parasitic Protozoa 
are also given. The African vertebrates, however, 
are only briefly referred to; the antelopes, for ex- 
ample, are not described, though their distribution | 
is given. Incidentally, a number of interesting 
points are mentioned, e.g., the use of the ascidian 
Polycarpa as a bait in seafishing, the habits of th 
rain-frog in burrowing into the nests of ants and 
NO. 2216, VoL. 89] 
| 
| 
| termites, and the almost entire absence of eels. 
| from the westerly-flowing rivers. 
| 
More bionomical information would have been 
valuable. For example, we are not told anything 
about the habits of African Annelids, whereas the 
introduced forms are referred to at some length. 
Dr. Gilchrist’s experience as an officer of the South 
African Fisheries investigations must have made 
the marine fauna of the Cape very familiar to him, 
but we are unable to form any picture of the 
common objects of the Cape shores. The book 
has been carefully revised, but the irritating forms 
“Rhodent ” and “ Rhodentia” are surely an over- 
sight. An excellent index has been compiled for 
this work, which is illustrated throughout. 
Physiology. By Prof. W. OD. _ Halliburton, 
I.R.S.  (Dent’s Scientific Primers. Edited by 
Dr. J. Reynolds Green, F.R.S.) Pp. xi+176-. 
(London: J. M. Dent and Sons, Ltd., n.d.) 
Price 1s. net. 
In this volume Prof. W. D. Halliburton “aims at 
presenting the main facts of modern physiology in 
an elementary way and in language as free from 
technical terms as possible.” In a sense, he has 
succeeded in this aim. The facts are nearly all 
there, crowded into 167 pages of excellent and 
not very small type, with many illustrations, and 
the language is not obtrusively technical but has 
an appearance of simplicity. Technical language, 
however, is a species of shorthand, and in com- 
pressing into so small a space without its aid 
all that Prof. Halliburton considers main facts, 
there is an inevitable loss of real intelligibility. 
Without some rigorous selection a book of this 
size tends to become a succession of statements 
hardly assimilable by a mind not previously ac- 
quainted with the subject, and so of little educa- 
tional value. Yet the work is obviously intended 
for students extremely junior, not so much in age 
as in knowledge. It is not, indeed, quite obvious 
| what public the author seeks to reach, but per- 
haps we may be guided by such remarks as those 
on the “need for diligent use of the tooth-brush, 
. tooth-powders are not to be recommended,” 
and “it is hardly necessary for me to preach to 
| readers the necessity for temperance in the use of 
alcohol.’? The complete absence of any reference 
to the reproductive system of either sex—a re- 
markable omission in a scientific primer on phy- 
siology—may perhaps be also taken as an indica- 
tion that here we have “popular” science of a 
: | familiar kind. 
The ticks are | 
Colour-Music. The: Art of ‘Mobile Colour. By 
Prof. A. Wallace Rimington. Prefatory Notes 
by Sir Hubert von Herkomer, M.V.O., and 
Dr. W. Brown. Pp. xx+185. (London: 
Hutchinson and Co., 1911.) Price 6s. 
Ir is difficult to give a fair impression of the value 
of this book. Its author obviously lacks scientific 
training (hence the inclusion of a chapter “on 
some scientific opinions ”) and adequate knowledge 
of the “laws” of colour mixture; he fails to 
