August 5, 1909] 



NA TURE 



155 



misses, in a book meant for medical men and 

 travellers, are good, plain descriptions and diagrams 

 giving the names and explaining the relations of all 

 those parts of the snake's skeleton and integument 

 that are of applied value in classification. Here there 

 are descriptions and figures, but they do not explain 

 ail the terms employed in the specific and generic 

 diagnoses ; moreover, some of the terms used are not 

 those commonly current, and some do not correspond 

 in text and figure. Thus the well-known quadrate 

 bone is referred to as the tympanic ; and the shields 

 which in the text are called, in accordance with the 

 authorised British version, internasal, prefrontal, 

 frontal, and parietal, appear in the figure under other 

 names. Seeing that the differentiation of species, and 

 «ven of genera, largely depends upon scale-characters, 

 this is hardly a matter of little moment. 



The second part, which treats of snake-venoms, 

 describes the methods of collecting venom and the 

 chemical composition of the secretion, and gives an 

 account of the way in which in the laboratory the 

 various constituents of the venom act upon the blood 

 and tissues. The gross effects of cobra-bite and viper- 

 bite are also contrasted. The author naturally draws 

 largely on his own e.xperiments, but the work of other 

 investigators is duly considered. It is rather surpris- 

 ing, however, not to find any mention whatever of 

 D. D. Cunningham, who for many years was in India 

 the observed of all observers in this field. 



The third part brings us to the cream of the subject, 

 namelv, the acquisition of immunity against snake- 

 venom and the use of the serum of immunised animals 

 as a cure for snake-bite. This subject is so largely 

 the author's own that criticism can only be offered 

 with deference. But, considering merely the way in 

 which the matter is represented in the book under 

 review, the author appears to rely rather too much on 

 his own large experience with cobra-venom, and alsa 

 to be hardly consistent ; for although he seems to 

 adhere to the untenable opinion that neurotoxin is the 

 essential toxic constituent of all venoms, whether colu- 

 brine or viperine, he allows that cobra-antivenin is of 

 no avail against what, by a strain of language, he calls 

 the " local " effects of viperine venom, and he con- 

 cedes the practical point that an antivenin of 

 general efficacy can only be obtained from an animal 

 that has been immunised against bof/i kinds of venom, 

 colubrine and viperine. 



The only other part of the book that requires notice 

 is that concerned with the venoms of animals other 

 than snakes. Here we find many interesting frag- 

 ments of information about the venom of polyps, sea- 

 urchins, arthropods, molluscs, fishes, and amphibia. 

 The venomous Mexican lizard, Heloderma, and the 

 spur and femoral gland of Ornithorhynchus are also 

 remembered, but, strange to tell, the dreadful sting- 

 ravs, the notorious jelly-fishes, and the moUuscan 

 Toxiglossa are quite forgotten. 



.As to Mr. .Austen's translation, it is as near as 

 possible perfect, being wonderfully faithful to the 

 original, and yet, so far as technical terms do not 

 interfere, good English. In the case of some of the 

 technical terms, however, Mr. .Austen's unflinching 

 fidelity sometimes goes near to make the reader wince. 

 NO. 2075, VOL. Si] 



There are expressions, such as " gingival fold," 

 " ergastoplasmic venogen," " sanguinolent serosity," 

 "laccate," " chloridate," " asporogenous," to which 

 even the hardest-mouthed jargonmonger will object. 



THE SCOTTISH LAKE SURVEY. 



Bathymetrical Survey of the Fresh-water Lochs of 

 Scotland. Under the Direction of Sir John Murray, 

 K.C.B., F.R.S., and Laurence PuUar. Pp. viii + 

 2S8 ; maps and plates. (London : Royal Geo- 

 graphical Society, and Edward Stanford, 1908.) 

 IN some countries it appears so natural that the 

 national surveys should present a complete de- 

 lineation of the solid surface of the land that the 

 accident of certain hollows being filled with water 

 does not excuse the surveyor from continuing his con- 

 tour lines across the submerged slopes. With us, 

 however, until the Survey Department was supplied 

 with the necessary data by private investigators, no 

 sub-lacustrine contour lines appeared even on maps of 

 the largest scale, and large surfaces of paper re- 

 mained blank save for the artistically graduated lines 

 which indicated the difference between a water and 

 a land surface. Most of the English lakes were sur- 

 veyed in 1893 and 1894, and the contour lines appear 

 on the later editions of the six-inch maps, with due 

 acknowledgment of the source whence they were 

 derived. 



The volume now before us completes the preliminary 

 publication of the survey of the lakes of Scotland 

 undertaken by Sir John Murray and Mr. Pullar in 

 1896, and now brought very near completion. It re- 

 presents an immense amount of work of national im- 

 portance carried out at the personal cost of the 

 authors, and its very magnitude makes it im- 

 possible to give any serviceable summary here 

 of the additions to limnology it contains. Eighteen 

 papers appeared in the Geographical Journal 

 between 1900 and 1908, illustrated by bathymetrical 

 maps of 213 fresh-water lochs, and this volume, 

 published separately by the Royal Geographical 

 Societv, gives particulars and bathymetrical maps of a 

 further series of 349 lochs, making a total of 562 

 surveyed and described. The number is so great that 

 we cannot help regretting that it has not been made 

 complete, but the rule appears to have been that no 

 steps were taken to survey those lochs on which a 

 boat was not available. In this way some sheets of 

 water of considerable size and great interest have been 

 left unsounded, a fact the more regrettable because 

 difficulties due to sporting rights in some of the nearly 

 inaccessible valleys in the heart of the great deer 

 forests may prove insuperable to less known investi- 

 gators in the future, while the high distinction of 

 Sir John Murray's name might possibly have smoothed 

 a way in the course of his great survey. 



Apart from this, the record of the Loch Survey is 

 one that Sir John Murray, Mr. Pullar and their 

 numerous assistants may well be proud of. How great 

 a body of work it represents may in part be gathered 

 from the complete index, which includes all lakes de- 

 scribed here and in the articles which have appeared 

 in the Geographical Journal; but a mass of additional 



