August 21, 1896.] 



SCIENCE. 



239 



does not express the meaning of the original 

 and might mislead a careless reader. On p. 

 164, the German ' Kreuzweise gestellt ' is ren- 

 dered by 'placed crosswise,' which in English 

 would nearly always be taken to mean ' placed 

 across the long axis of the body,' though it 

 might, in English, mean ' arranged in the form 

 of a cross. ' This is the meaning of the Ger- 

 man. 



On p. 191 the sentence beginning ' The em- 

 bryo is now surrounded by ' would be ambigu- 

 ous if taken by itself, although it is entirely 

 clear in the original. These instances and 

 other similar ones are scarcely worth calling at- 

 tention to in a work of such general excellence, 

 and every zoologist has reason to be grateful to 

 the translators for their self-sacrificing task. 



The book is something more than a transla- 

 tion since both the authors and the translators 

 have added to it numerous notes, which serve, 

 for the most part, to call attention to the contri- 

 butions that have appeared since the German 

 editions were printed. These additions will be 

 found particularly valuable to the specialist in 

 directing his attention to the recent literature, 

 but in most cases too brief to be of direct use to 

 the student. The additions are distinguished 

 from the original text by the use of brackets, 

 and following each is an indication of its author- 

 ship. The authorship of these additions can be 

 a matter of little interest to the readers of the 

 book, and one could wish that the additions had 

 been expanded and the text rewritten to ac- 

 commodate them. 



The translators have added to the lists of 

 literature appendices, which include the litera- 

 ture which has appeared since the publication 

 of the German edition and constitute a very 

 important addition to the book. In matters of 

 bibliography the papers issuing from the Zo- 

 ological Laboratory of Harvard University have 

 long been models and these appendices are no 

 exception. 



Finally the translators have added excellent 

 indexes, subject and author. 



The publishers have done their part of the 

 work satisfactorily, and especially so with refer- 

 ence to the illustrations, most of which it would 

 be difficult to distinguish from the originals. 



Jacob Reighard. 



Artistic and Scientific Taxidermy and Modelling. 

 A manual of instruction in the methods of pre- 

 serving and reproducing the correct form of 

 all natural objects, including a chapter on 

 the modelling of foliage. By Montagu 

 Browne. London and New York : Macmil- 

 lan & Co. 1896. $6.50. 

 It is something like twenty years since the 

 appearance of Montagu Bi'owne's Practical 

 Taxidermy, a book of some 150 pages, and the 

 present handsome volume of nearly thrice that 

 size may be taken as representing the improve- 

 ments in the art of taxidermy which the author 

 considers to have taken place during the last 

 twenty-five years. The book opens with a 

 brief review of the origin and progress of taxi- 

 dermy, next comes a short chapter on tools, 

 and then follows a long and valuable section 

 devoted to formulas for various killing, preser- 

 vative, modelling and other compounds, most 

 of which have been tested, and many of which 

 have been devised by Mr. Browne. This 

 chapter, which includes notes on the perma- 

 nency of pigments, will prove most useful to both 

 the amateur and professional preparator, for in 

 it are brought together a host of recipes which, 

 even when printed elsewhere, are scattered far 

 and wide. Here, for example, are to be found 

 many of the methods used in the preparation 

 of the beautiful invertebrates sent out by the 

 Naples Station, and here are formulas for mak- 

 ing the gelatin casts which have come so much 

 into vogue of late years. Few, however, will 

 agree with Mr. Browne's wholesale denuncia- 

 tion of arsenic as a preservative, and fewer still 

 will accept in its stead whiting and chloride of 

 lime, much less pepper ! Arsenic may be used 

 with too free a hand, and exposure to light and 

 air may go far towards preserving fur and 

 feathers from the attacks of insect pests, but 

 arsenic certainly prevents the ravages of Der- 

 mestes, and there is nothing like it for preser- 

 ving intact ligamentary skeletons and the sterna 

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 hundreds of small ' rough skeletons ' are of ne- 

 cessity kept in the duplicate series to be worked 

 on as occasion demands. 



From the chapter on collecting one infers that 

 those useful articles, the auxiliary barrel and 

 cyclone trap, have not found their way across 



