668 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXVII. No. 957 



Glaridichthys torralhasi Eigenmann, repre- 

 sented by one specimen from the latter lo- 

 cality. 



Baencm Brown 



SCIENTIFIC BOOKS 

 A History of Geographical Discovery in the 

 Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. By 

 Edward Heawood, M.A. Small 8vo. 475 

 pages. Cambridge University Press. 

 This work is one of the Cambridge Geo- 

 graphical series, its aiithor being librarian to 

 the Royal Geographical Society. Its aim is 

 to deal with the less known period which fol- 

 lowed the great discoveries of the fifteenth and 

 sixteenth centuries. The author defines his 

 period as " that in which, after the decline of 

 Spain and Portugal, the main outlines of the 

 world-map were completed by their successors 

 among the nations of Europe." The book is 

 therefore a narrative mainly of the explora- 

 tions of Great Britain, Ketherlands, France 

 and Russia. The sphere of the French was 

 largely in North America, and Russian en- 

 deavor was devoted to northern Asia and its 

 adjoining seas, while it was left to the Eng- 

 lish and Dutch navigators to fill in the map 

 of the remote seas and distant lands of the 

 globe. 



At the close of the period the map of the 

 world was distinctly modern, though it re- 

 mained for the explorers of the nineteenth and 

 twentieth centuries to fill in most of the map 

 of Africa and of the polar regions, and to 

 make more advanced surveys and detailed 

 study of all lands and seas. 



The author is hampered by the necessity of 

 crowding a vast amount of material into a 

 small volume, which is an encyclopedia in out- 

 line, and hence lacks continuity, and interest 

 for the general reader. Hundreds of locali- 

 ties and explorers are noticed, each in a sen- 

 tence or two, with the barest statement of 

 what the explorer did, or tried to do. But this 

 is probably the fault of the series as planned, 

 and not of the author. In a few instances he 

 has given a relatively full and kee'nly interest- 

 ing narrative, as, for example, of Tasman, 

 Anson, Hudson, Cook and Vancouver. 



About sixty illustrations contribute sub: 

 stantially to the value and interest of the vol- 

 vime. These include many maps belonging to 

 the period, and several portraits of the more 

 eminent navigators. Considering its small 

 size, about four hundred pages of text, the 

 work is well suited for reference, particularly 

 by reason of the thoroughness with which the 

 index has been prepared. This occupies about 

 fifty double-column pages and contains sev- 

 eral thousand entries. 



Albert Perry Brigham 



Terminologie der EntwicJclungsmechanih der 

 Tiere und Pflanzen. In Verbindung mit 

 Professor C. Correns, Professor Alfred 

 FiscHEL, Professor E. Kuster von Professor 

 Wilhelm Roux. Leipzig. 1912. Pp. xii 

 4-465. 



This book represents a type of purely scien- 

 tific publication which has been scarcely at- 

 tempted as yet in this country for any field of 

 the biological sciences. As Professor Roux 

 points out in the preface of the book, the de- 

 velopment within recent years of analytic in- 

 vestigation in biology has brought about the 

 development of a new terminology, especially 

 in connection with embryology and inherit- 

 ance. The purpose of this book is to make 

 it possible to determine readily the meanings 

 given to new terms by their authors, as well as 

 the special meanings which many terms have 

 acquired in connection with experimental and 

 analytic investigation. That a real need for 

 a book of this sort exists Professor Roux re- 

 gards as evident because, as he says, the previ- 

 ously published terminologies of zoology, biol- 

 ogy, medicine, etc., have for the most part 

 omitted the special terminology of develop- 

 mental mechanics. 



The book defines some eleven hundred terms, 

 purely philosophical terms being excluded and 

 botanical and zoological terms being com- 

 bined as far as seemed advisable. But that 

 the book is far more than a simple dictionary 

 will be evident from the fact that the eleven 

 hundred terms occupy nearly five hundred 

 pages. In many cases reference is made not 



