Jan. 29, 1880] 



stimulate other well-meaning members of parliament to 

 do what they can to qualify themselves to conduct the 

 legislation of the country on broader, more enlightened, 

 and more scientific principles than have ever hitherto been 

 brought into play. Meantime those who have the true 

 welfare of our country at heart will use every means to 

 get education in science introduced into all our schools 

 and colleges without distinction, so that in future years 

 rulers and people will be guided in their public conduct 

 not by party prejudices but by the principles of scientific 

 statesmanship. 



NA TURE 



297 



NICHOLSON'S PALAEONTOLOGY 

 A Manual of Paleontology, for the Use of Students. 

 With a General Introduction on the Principles of 

 Pala-ontology. By H. Alleyne Nicholson, M.D., &o, 

 Professor of Natural History in the University of St. 

 Andrew's. Second Edition. (W. Blackwood and Sons, 

 1879) 



IT is a great pity that there should be any demand for 

 a Student's Manual of Palaeontology. The separation 

 of the study of extinct forms of life from that of recent 

 animals, which is implied in the term Palaeontology, and 

 which is unfortunately largely maintained in practical 

 science, is much to be deplored. In nearly all great 

 museums, as in the British Museum, the fossil scries of 

 animal remains are preserved and displayed in different 

 parts of the museum from that in which the recent ones 

 repose and are studied and taken care of by a separate 

 staff of officials. The extinct coral?, for example, are in 

 the hands of one set of naturalists and the recent corals 

 in the hands of another, the most closely allied or even 

 identical species are widely separated from one another, 

 and considerable labour and trouble are caused to any 

 observer who wishes to bring them together for com- 

 parison. There are necessary gaps enough in the various 

 zoological series from the imperfection of the geological 

 record; in museum collections they should be rendered as 

 small as possible. 



Prof. Nicholson's book cannot take the place of 

 such a work as Quen^tedt's " Petrefactenkunde," which 

 has a proper standpoint as being required by the 

 geologist as a means of identifying fossils. The present 

 work may be described as an attempt to teach students 

 as much as possible about those forms of life which 

 happen to be extinct, by means of the aid of as lutle 

 knowledge of living forms as possible. The author 

 writes in the introduction : " Palaeontology may be con- 

 sidered as the zoology and botany of the past. Re- 

 garding it from this, the only true point of view, some 

 knowledge of zoology and botany is essential to the pro- 

 secution of the study of palaeontology, and such details of 

 these sciences ns may be deemed requisite will be intro- 

 duced in the proper place." Some knowledge of zoology 

 and botany is indeed required to make a man a successful 

 palaeontologist ; the real fact is, that it is only the most 

 skilful and deeply-versed zoologists and botanists who 

 are capable of dealing with the problems of palaeontology 

 with any valuable result. Only those most intimately 

 acquainted with living forms are qualified to deal with 

 the fragmentary remains of extinct animals and plants. 



It would be well, indeed, if the term palaeontology were 

 abolished, and with it any pretensions of investigators to 

 treat fossils from a separate standpoint. Botanists are 

 full of complaints of the confusions introduced into their 

 science by the operations of certain palaeo-botanists, to 

 use the present author's term, who manufacture genera 

 and species wholesale from impressions of single leaves 

 or even fragments of leaves, and there are plenty of 

 confusions equally detrimental in the nomenclature of 

 extinct animals. It is most illogical to separate the 

 members of the animal and plant series for purposes of 

 study into two groups : that containing those forms which 

 exist at the present epoch, and that embracing those 

 which have lived and mostly become extinct during the 

 vast antecedent period of which record remains. The 

 separation is a purely artificial one, productive of no 

 good, illustrating no general scientific law, coinciding 

 with no natural division of the biological series: and is, 

 further, one especially likely to produce misleading 

 impressions in the minds of students. 



Throughout the book the author recurs again and again 

 to the distinction of palaeontology as a science from 

 zoology and botany. He writes of palaeontology as based 

 on the kindred sciences of zoology and botany. " No 

 satisfactory acquaintance with the former can be arrived 

 at without the previous acquisition of some knowledge 

 of the latter." "A few points of these sciences maybe 

 noticed as having special bearing on the study of palae- 

 ontology." Further on, in an account of Prof. Huxley's 

 now abandoned group, the Annuloida, which is retained 

 in the present work, it is mentioned that " The sub- 

 kingdom was proposed by Huxley as a provisional 

 arrangement to include the two groups of the Echino- 

 dermata and Scolecida, and the following extraordinary 

 statement follows : Whether this arrangement be ulti- 

 mately retained or not matters not at all to the palceonio- 

 ioifist, as no member of the Scolecida is known in the fossil 

 condition. Could any teaching be more pernicious to a 

 student ? 



After several very good introductory chapters on 

 general geological subjects, Chapter VI. treats of the 

 divisions of the animal kingdom and succession of 

 organic types. The author, after treating of the de- 

 velopment theory, concludes by patting the Darwinian 

 theory complacently on the back "as an invaluable, 

 indeed an indispensable, working hypothesis," but most 

 unfortunately for the value of his book, he does not 

 make use of the theory as a working one, but considers 

 it " preferable to enter upon the study of the actual 

 facts unfettered by praeconceptions and unpledged to 

 theories." He accordingly treats of the classification 

 of the animal kingdom in most antiquated style. All 

 animals may be classed under five or six "morpho- 

 logical types,'' and "no comparison is possible between an 

 animal belonging to one sub-kingdom and one belonging 

 to another, since their distinguishing characters are the 

 results of the modification of two essentially different 

 ground plans." 



"We must abandon the idea that it is possible to 

 establish a linear classification of the animal kingdom." 

 But why suggest any such erroneous idea as this latter to 

 the student at all ? If only the working hypothesis had 

 been adopted, the real meaning of modern scientific 



