236 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXVIII. No. 712 



noticed ordinarily except through long famil- 

 iarity with the bones themselves. 



M. Hue's drawings serve to emphasize the 

 fact that the text-books of osteology and 

 mammalogy have failed to make the most of 

 the characters offered by the scapula, humerus, 

 femur and other limb bones, although such 

 characters are very important to the fossil 

 bone hunter in the field, and also sometimes 

 give indications of affinity between two forms 

 whose skulls and dentition have become widely 

 divergent. In this connection, in view of the 

 sharp ordinal and family diiierenees in the 

 tarsus and especially the astragalus, it is 

 rather curious that the author devotes so 

 many plates to the tibia and fibula, which are 

 usually less clearly distinctive, and yet only 

 figures the tarsus of two forms, the dog and 

 the reindeer. 



In conclusion, M. Hue may be assured that 

 his work will be of use not only to the arch- 

 eologist, but also, and to a considerable degree, 

 to the student of mammalian osteology. The 

 work, of course, covers only a rather limited 

 fauna, but its method and example are alike 

 valuable. It would greatly widen the general 

 intelligibility of osteology if the skeletal parts 

 of all the more important genera of ma mm als, 

 both living and fossil, could be represented 

 in plates similar to those of M. Hue, but 

 arranged historically, i. e., according to the 

 best views of their evolutional sequence. 

 This would naturally be a large undertaking, 

 but no bigger for the twentieth century than 

 DeBlainville's Osteographie was for the first 

 half of the nineteenth century. 



William K. Gregory 



Essai sur la. Valeur Antitoxique de V Aliment 

 Complet et Incomplet. By A. LeEenard. 

 Paris, J. Mersch. 1907. 8vo; pp. 211. 

 It is seldom that a work appears which has 

 more interest for general physiology than the 

 present one. Starting with a study of the 

 toxic action of copper salts upon PenicilUum 

 glaucum, the author has incepted a series of il- 

 luminating experiments upon the ability of 

 the different essential nutrient elements to 

 function as antitoxic agents. The action of 

 the various salts and ions was tested in all 



combinations possible, always in the presence 

 of a suitable source of carbon. 



While the idea of an antidoting action be- 

 tween elements is not new, it has never before 

 been so extensively investigated as an an- 

 tagonistic relation between foods and poisons. 



The author presents a lengthy review of 

 literature upon the general subject of toxicity 

 and antidoting action, but unfortunately de- 

 votes little attention to the work which has 

 been done since 1900. It is to be especially 

 regretted that the discussion does not include 

 the investigations upon the antidoting action 

 of physiologically balanced solutions by Loew, 

 Loeb, Osterhout, Duggar, Benecke and others. 



The chapter on the general biology and 

 physiology of PenicilUum glaucum gathers up 

 and coordinates much of the modem and early 

 work upon this classical and oft-investigated 

 fungus. The chapter upon the physiological 

 role of the essential nutrients seems conspicu- 

 ously brief in comparison with the treatment 

 accorded other subjects of like importance. 

 Nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus receive a 

 brief elementary treatment; the other mineral 

 elements are very briefly dismissed. 



The author's extended discussion of the 

 nature of toxicity contains numerous points 

 of special interest for the student of physiol- 

 ogy, a few of which deserve mention in pass- 

 ing. He emphasizes the necessity for distin- 

 guishing between injurious effects due to the 

 osmotic strength of the solution and those 

 actually due to poisons, especially since the 

 former may be brought about by non-toxic 

 substances. 



Following the classification of Chassevant 

 and Eichet, which distinguishes between anti- 

 genetic and antibiotic concentrations of the 

 toxic agent, LeEenard distinguishes the anti- 

 auxic and antibiotic concentrations of copper 

 for PenicilUum glaucum. The antiauxic con- 

 centration is defined as the one which allows 

 the fungus spore to germinate and produce 

 some sort of a germ tube, but does not allow 

 the development of the same into a thallus. 

 It is admitted that antiauxic effects may also 

 be produced by a paucity of nutrients. By 

 diminishing the amount of poison, a suffi- 

 ciently weak concentration is finally reached 



