DECEMBER 29, 1899. ] 
Teleost. Of less importance is the cut of the 
egg-case of a shark labelled as that of the skate, 
together with similar slips. The introduction 
of such phrases as ‘some fish throw their great 
stomachs over creatures bigger than themselves, 
almost as a fowler throws his nets’ is hardly 
to be commended. In the case in question, 
Chiasmodon, the exact mode of feeding of this 
abyssal fish is absolutely unknown, and prob- 
ably will ever remain so. But the eversion of 
the stomach in a star-fish-like manner is a most 
startling guess. It would certainly be less of a 
shock to morphologists if they were told that 
this unique specimen of a deep water fish had 
captured its food in the way customary with 
great mouthed fishes, whose distensible jaws 
enable them to take extraordinary mouthfuls. 
Perhaps the most harmful part of the book is 
its theorizing. Without apparently a technical 
grounding in his subject, the author commends 
to his readers many independent hypotheses, 
of which these, selected at random, are ex- 
amples: that gill-slits were not primary ; that 
filamentous gills, as occurring in shark embryos, 
are the primitive form; that the teleostean 
swim-bladder has ‘degraded’ from a lung-like 
condition; that ‘all our fishes tended more 
towards being air-breathing or land-haunting 
creatures formerly’; that, by the evidence of 
(tertiary) fossils, fishes which are now tropical 
must have occurred in icy polar seas. 
13} 10% 
BOOKS RECEIVED. 
La nature tropicale. 
1899. Pp. 315. 
Our Native Birds. D. LANGE. 
don, The Macmillan Company. 
162. $1.00. 
Elementary Astronomy. EDWARD 8S. HOLDEN. New 
York, Henry Holt & Co. 1899. Pp. xv + 446. 
Lamarckiens et Darwiniens. FELIX LE DANTEC. 
J. CoOsTaANTIN. Paris, Alcan. 
New York and Lon- 
1899. Pp. ix+ 
Paris, Alcan. 1899. Pp. 191. 2 fr. 50. 
Analyse microchimique et spectroscopique. EK. PozZzi- 
Escor. Paris, Gauthier-Villars. 1899. Pp. 192. 
2 fr. 50. 
Report of the Proceedings of the Seventh Annual Meet- 
ing for the Promotion of Engineering Education, Vol. 
VII. Published by the Society. 1899. Pp. xxii 
+ 193. 
SCIENCE. 
969 
SCIENTIFIC JOURNALS AND ARTICLES. 
WE regret to learn that Natural Science is 
compelled to suspend publication. It will be 
remembered that this was threatened last year 
but was temporarily averted by a change of 
editors and publishers. Natural Science, while 
maintaining a high standard, has been, perhaps, 
the most readable of the scientific journals, and 
it seems unfortunate that there should not be 
sufficient financial support to warrant its con- 
tinuation. There is, however, no scientific 
journal in the world that is self-supporting, in 
the sense of paying editors and contributors for 
their work at what would be its market value 
in other directions of activity. This, of course, 
also holds for universities, museums, etc., and 
there appears to be no reason why scientific 
journals should not be endowed or subsidized, 
as is necessary in the case of other scientific in- 
stitutions. Under the heading ‘ Eliminated’ 
Natural Science takes leave in the following 
words : 
It is one of the conditions of continued vigorous ac- 
tivity on an organism’s part that income be at least 
equal to expenditure, and the same is true of journals. 
To try to sustain the activity when the aforesaid con- 
dition is not fulfilled is not uninteresting, but there 
are limits to the possibility of continuing it. We re- 
gret to say that we have reached these limits as 
regards Natural Science, of which this is the last num- 
ber, so far as we are concerned. In spite of generous 
support from many during the past year, and our own 
endeavors in publishing and editing, the journal has 
not reached that measure of success which would 
seem to us to warrant another year’s experiment. 
We make our bow, then, to the process of natural elim- 
ination. 
The Journal of School Geography, which has 
hitherto been published as well as edited by 
Professor Richard E. Dodge, of the Teachers 
College, Columbia University, will hereafter be 
published by the J. L. Hammett Company, of 
Boston, Mass., and New York City. This 
change in the business management involves no 
change in the editorial management or policy. 
SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 
THE NEBRASKA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 
TuE Academy held its Tenth Annual Meet- 
ing on December Ist and 2d in the botanical lec- 
