Heviews — Wachsmuth and Springer — On Crinoids. 219 



elusion tliat business offered him bettei' chances of making an income 

 than the work of a doctor. His friends, as well as the College 

 authorities, now urged him to proceed with his medical work ; but 

 he had made up his mind. He married and set up in business, with 

 seven pounds in hand to furnish his house and stock his shop. Eight 

 well he and his wife succeeded, so that the business steadily increased. 

 He made journeys to the Potteries and to Hamburgh so as to buy 

 direct from the manufacturers, and by dint of hard work succeeded 

 by the year 1860 in accumulating a sufficient foi'tune to retire ia 

 comfort. 



As early as 1837, however, Mr. Eobertson began his natural 

 history studies. "Between the years 1850 and 1860 natural history 

 pursuits and business occupations overlapped one another, but the 

 true naturalist ' has no time for money-making,' and accordingly 

 the time came when science extinguished commerce." 



He then obtained a house known as Fern Bank, at Millport in 

 Great Curabrae, an island in the Firth of Clyde. To this island he 

 had frequently gone for relaxation in previous years, and although 

 he continued to reside for some ye-ars principally at Glasgow, yet 

 since 1886 the little island has been the permanent home of the 

 Naturalist. 



Rather more than half the volume is devoted to an account of 

 Mr. Eobertson's scientific labours, of his dredging explorations, and 

 of the Naturalists with whom he became associated ; amongst whom 

 Dr. Harvey, Dr. Baird, the Eev. A. M. Norman, Dr. Gwyn Jeffreys, 

 Dr. Dohrn, and others. There are reminiscences of Thomas Edwai'd, 

 whose history, as Mr. Stebbing remarks, tends " to cast something 

 of a sombre gloom over scientific pui'suits." He adds, " It is well 

 that it should be seen that there is no necessary connexion between 

 an intense love of nature and a deplorable condition of a man's 

 private affairs." Mr. Eobertson, however, was evidently too much 

 of a business man to neglect trade in the pursuit of his hobbies, and 

 after successfully fighting the battle of life, he has done excellent 

 service in the cause of science. H. B. W. 



II. — The Perisomio Plates of the Crinoids. By Charles Wachs- 

 muth and Frank Springer. Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci. Philadelphia, 

 1890, Part III. pp. 345-392, Pis. IX. X. (February, 1891). 



ri'^HIS paper, although in the importance of the facts which it 

 JL makes known it can hardly rank with the same authors' recent 

 paper on the ventral structure of Taxocrinus and Haploa-inns,^ will 

 nevertheless mark an important advance in the history of Crinoid 

 Morphology. 



The authors divide the skeletal elements of a Crinoid into primary 

 and secondary. Primary elements include (a) the Abactinal plates, 

 developed on the right antimei'e and connected with the axial 

 nerve-cords, viz. stem-ossicles, infrabasals, basals, radials, and all 



1 " Discovery of the ventral structure of Taxocrinus and Snplocrmns, and con- 

 sequent modifications in the classification of the Criiioidea," Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci. 

 Philadelphia, 1888, part iii. pp. 337-363, pi. xviii. (February, 1889). 



