Reviews — von Reichenhach's Textbook of Palceozoology. 37 



Bonney quotes somewhat discursively from contemporary opinion — 

 not always a safe criterion. It is unfortunate that the author should 

 not have observed the additional testimony of the review from which 

 he gives an excerpt that this earlier writer " must be credited with 

 the merit of having been the first of late years to give to the world 

 . . . a clear exposition of the sub-aerial theory of denudation".^ 



The illustrations are limited to nineteen in number, and, it must 

 be confessed, afford scope for improvement; but of the text of this 

 book it may unhesitatingly be predicated that it will help its readers 

 " to understand better and regard with deeper interest" the earth on 

 which they live. 



III. — A Textbook of Pal^ozoology. 



Lehrbtjch deb, Palaozoologie. By Professor E. Stomer von Reichen- 

 BACH. Erster Teil : Wirbellose Tiere, pp. x, 342, with 398 

 figures (1909). Zweiter Teil : Wirbeltiere, pp. viii,, 325, with 

 234 figures (1912). Leipzig: B. G. Teubner. Price 10 marks 

 each volume, cloth. 



rriHIS textbook differs from the majority of recent palseontological 

 X textbooks in that it does not, as a rule, give diagnoses of genera, 

 but usually confines itself to orders and higher divisions. It has the 

 advantage of being much more readable, but the drawback is that it 

 cannot be used for determining genera. In the first volume, after an 

 introduction of twenty-eight pages dealing with the condition and 

 preservation of fossils, the skeleton, etc., the Invertebrata are de- 

 scribed. After the description of each phylum, sub-phylum, or class, 

 a short diagnosis of its subdivisions, a graphic table of their distribution 

 in time, a section on their geological occurrence and evolution and 

 a bibliography are given. In the second volume, after an introduction 

 of thirteen pages, the Vertebrata- are similarly treated. 



At the end of the second volume sixty-three pages are devoted to 

 concluding remarks on the succession of faunas, the geographical 

 distribution and oecology of animals in the geologic past, palseozoology 

 and the theory of evolution, death and extinction, and the literature 

 of these subjects. Considered as a whole the work is much more 

 attractively written than most German textbooks. It is very well 

 printed and both volumes are excellently illustrated with a great 

 number of recently described fossils, and there is a good index to each. 



B. HoBSON. 



IV. — The Stexjctuke of the Eaeth. By T. G. Bonnet, Sc.D., 

 F.E.S. 8vo; pp. 1-94. London: T. C. & E. C. Jack, 1912. 

 Price 6d. net. 



POPTJLAE exposition of geological science is now receiving due 

 attention, and it is fortunate that such an experienced teacher 

 as Professor Bonney should have undertaken to write this small 

 volume for " The People's Books " series. The subject is introduced 



^ Geol. Mag., 1867, p. 412. , 



