420 
‘NATURE. 
[JUNE 27, 1912 
the form of four large profusely illustrated 
volumes in 1908. In that work instructive com- 
parisons were instituted between the distribution 
and structure of the hair in man and a series of 
primates. The present volume may be regarded 
as an amplification of the comparative data that 
were set forth in the work of 1908, and an exten- 
sion of its scope to include the mammalia as a 
whole. 
The mode of its origin is reflected in every page 
of this atlas, which deals very fully with monkeys 
and lemurs, and is rich in references to peculiari- 
ties of hair-arrangement that resemble or differ 
from the conditions that obtain in man. 
Of the first twelve excellent coloured plates, 
eight represent primates and the rest illustrate 
the variability of the hairy covering in one species 
(the pig) and in a series of mammals, either 
especially rich or poor in hair, or presenting 
peculiarities in its arrangement or structure. 
There are twelve uncoloured and four coloured 
plates, containing a great multitude of figures, 
showing upon a greatly enlarged scale the appear- 
ance of the surface of the hair-shaft in representa- 
tives of all the mammalian orders; two plates 
showing peculiarities in the disposition of the 
boundary-lines between hairy and hairless skin, 
the arrangement of hair in tufts, and the dis- 
tribution of tactile hairs; and finally five plates 
representing the forms of hair and hair-like struc- 
ture in a wide range of animals and plants. 
Although there are only a page and a half of 
preface, and less than two and a half pages of 
text, this volume is replete with curious and valu- | 
able information, much of it freshly garnered by 
Dr. Friedenthal, which sheds instructive light 
upon the problems of kinship amongst mammals 
and upon phylogeny. Most of this knowledge is 
packed into the concise descriptions of the illus- 
trations and does not relate exclusively to hair, 
but also to such matters as proportions of the 
body and the state of development of hands and 
feet, which are important distinctive features 
among the primates. 
That the information supplied by the texture of 
the hair is of real value as an indication of kin- 
ship is demonstrated by the agreement between 
the conclusions reached by Dr. Friedenthal in 
this treatise and those set forth recently by com- 
parative anatomists as the result of investigations 
upon the structure of the nervous, muscular, 
skeletal, and other systems. The resemblance of 
the hair of Tarsius to both lemurs and apes is a 
case in point; and at a time when it is beginning 
generally to be recognised that the old-world apes 
and man in the course of their evolution must 
NO. 2226, VOL. 89] 
have passed through a platyrrhine stage of 
development, which in turn had followed on a 
| prosimian (Tarsius-like) stage, it is peculiarly 
interesting 
to find that ‘“Callithrix and the 
morphologically very lemuroid Brazilian Nycti- 
pithecus have hair of the prosimian type, quite un- 
like the hair of the other families of apes” (p. 7). 
Fresh evidence is adduced to strengthen the 
conviction that the gorilla is man’s nearest rela- 
tive amongst the apes. 
Dr. Friedenthal has devoted special attention to 
the tactile- (so-called sinus-) hair, which he regards 
as phylogenetically older and more stable than 
the covering-hair. For instance, the sinus-hairs 
in the lips and eyebrow region persist in 
mammals which become otherwise hairless. It is 
one of man’s distinctive features that he has lost 
his sinus-hair. 
This volume is not only a valuable work of 
reference, but also a suggestive addition to our 
knowledge of mammalian kinships. - 
G. Ev.ior SMITH. 
A FLORULA OF SAO PAULO. 
Flora der Umgebung der Stadt Séo Paulo in 
Brasiien. By Prof. “AS Usteria5 Pp) 27a. 
(Jena: Gustav Fischer, 1911.) Price 7 marks. 
HE author of the book was for several years 
professor of botany in the Escola Poly- 
technica at Sado Paulo in Brazil. Transferred 
from his native mountains of Switzerland to 
a country and a flora so foreign in every 
way, he naturally looked out for a handy 
book to make himself familiar with the 
plant life of the field of his new activity, and 
not finding anything that would meet his require- 
ments, he resolutely set to work to supply the 
thing needed. A census of the flora of the dis- 
trict was obviously the first object to aim at; but 
being a pupil of Carl Schroeter, of Zurich, he. 
was not content with a dry list of plant names, 
and so ecological and phenological observations 
formed from the beginning as much part of his - 
field work as collecting. 
The area chosen for his botanical survey was 
small—deducting the ground occupied by the town 
of Sao Paulo, not much more than half of that of 
the County of London—and in so far within the 
limits of the powers of a single man whose 
ordinary duties claimed much of his time. But 
the absence in Sio Paulo of an adequate library 
and a trustworthy herbarium for comparison was a 
serious obstacle. In fact, the author had to be 
contented mainly with collecting material and 
. notes, in the hope of being able to work them out 
