272 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXVIII. No. 973 



Professor Kiister, now of Bonn, prepared 

 this compact little book of about 200 pages as 

 a result of Hs long experience in training stu- 

 dents at the Botanical Institute of Halle. It 

 is neither a text-book nor a laboratory manual 

 of the ordinary kind, including a definite 

 course of study, but a reference compendium 

 of technique including " the most important 

 culture methods for all groups of microorgan- 

 isms." The conception is an excellent one and 

 Professor Kiister has carried it out well. 



The book is about equally divided between 

 a general and a special part. The general part 

 includes sections on water and glass, on liquid 

 and solid media, sterilization, types of cul- 

 tures, isolation and pure cultivation, inocula- 

 tion, atmospheric conditions, temperature, 

 light, evaporation, transpiration and cultiva- 

 tion in agitated or flowing media, detection 

 and effects of waste products, operation of 

 poisons, microbiochemical analysis and aux- 

 anography and the preservation of cultures. 

 The special part includes sections dealing, re- 

 spectively, with protozoa in general, with fla- 

 gellata, with myxomycetes, with algae, with 

 fungi and with bacteria. 



Two things are particularly notable about 

 this book, its scholarly tone and the breadth of 

 the field covered. Although the treatment is 

 necessarily very condensed and no attempt is 

 made to discuss with any fullness the philo- 

 sophical problems involved, yet such funda- 

 mental questions as the effect of water upon 

 glass, the physical and chemical characters of 

 culture media and the study of waste products 

 are discussed in a spirit which should prove 

 enlightening to the American student who is 

 too often superficially trained to use a few 

 arbitrary methods without knowing or caring 

 for underlying reasons. The other special 

 virtue of the book is the attention to groups 

 other than the commonly studied pathogenic 

 forms. Special media are described, for ex- 

 ample, for the cultivation of fat-splitting bac- 

 teria, the acetic acid bacteria, butyric acid 

 bacteria, the nitrifying and denitrifying bac- 

 teria, the sulphur bacteria and the purple bac- 

 teria. Nine pages are devoted to the Protozoa, 

 fifteen to the Algse and thirty-nine to the 



Fungi. In general, citations of the literature 

 dealing with technical procedures are fuU and 

 valuable although American and English 

 methods are neglected. It is strange to find 

 no reference to the Hesse and Hiss and North 

 media or to the extensive work done on stand- 

 ard methods of water examination. Por Ger- 

 man work, however, the book seems very com- 

 prehensive and as a reference source for deal- 

 ing with any of the more unfamiliar groups of 

 microbes it should prove invaluable in any 

 laboratory. C.-E. A. WmsLOW 



Ameeican Museum or Natural Histoey 



Catalogue of the Collection of Birds' Eggs in 

 the British Museum. Vol. V., Carinatse 

 (Passeriformes completed). By W. R. 

 Ogilvie-Grant. 1912. Pp. xxiii + 547 ; 

 Pis. XXII. 



With the issue of the present volume the 

 British Museum has brought to a successful 

 conclusion the publication of another series 

 of their splendid catalogues, which, while in 

 most cases professing only to be records of 

 their own collections, become in effect world 

 records of the subjects covered. Ornithology 

 has been especially favored with these reviews, 

 the " Catalogue of Birds " (27 volumes, 1875- 

 1895), the " Hand-list of the Genera and Spe- 

 cies of Birds" (5 volumes, 1899-1909), and 

 the " Catalogue of Birds' Eggs " (5 volumes, 

 1901-1912) being absolutely indispensable 

 sources of reference to all working ornitholo- 

 gists who would make pretense to more than 

 local studies. The first British Museum pub- 

 lication on birds' eggs was a small work by G. 

 R. Grey, issued in 1852, but this was merely 

 an enumeration of the eggs of British birds, 

 and has long been obsolete. The national col- 

 lection of eggs continued to grow, both by 

 donation and purchase, and by 1900 had long 

 passed the 50,000 mark, making it in many 

 respects the foremost collection in the world. 

 In preparing the exposition of this wealth of 

 material the trustees of the museum were for- 

 tunate in securing the services of Mr. E. W. 

 Gates, who is well known as the author of sev- 

 eral of the bird volumes of the " Fauna of 

 British India," and as the editor of the second 



