JANUAEY26, 1900.] 



SCIENCE. 



149 



character, viz., its inherent tendency to fur- 

 ther growth. These, then, are not rudiments, 

 but arreeted, reduced, vanishing, or vestigial 

 structures, and should be spoken of as vestiges. 

 Why, because Darwin unfortunately misapplied 

 the word rudimentary, should we necessarily 

 regard this misuse as hallowed, and ever 

 after refuse to use the word in its common 

 sense ? To such an extent has this misuse of 

 the word been carried that even encyclopaedic 

 dictionaries, after defining the word rudiment 

 in such a manner as to prove that it is the very 

 word we are seeking, as a rendering of the idea 

 expressed by 'Anlage,' give us, under the 

 technical use of the word, " In zoology, a part 

 or organ, the development of which has been ar- 

 rested (see Vestige)." It would require but 

 little trouble on the part of teachers of biology 

 to reinvest the word rudiment with its proper 

 meaning. By carefully insisting on the use of 

 the words vestigium and vestigial or their 

 equivalents, for all abortive or reduced struc- 

 tures met with in the p,dult animal, and re- 

 stricting the terms rudiment and rudimentary 

 to all growing and developing tissues and or- 

 gans, they could insure this result in a few 

 years." 



Ample compensation for the long delay ne- 

 cessitated by the change of translators and the 

 size of the work is furnished in the additional 

 matter in the form of foot-notes and bibli- 

 ography, an addition without which a work on 

 such a rapidly growing subject as invertebrate 

 embryology would by this time be somewhat 

 antiquated. Many of these foot-notes are 

 valuable and suggestive, but others show a lack 

 of perspective, pardonable, perhaps, in trans- 

 lators who cannot be expected to be familiar 

 with all the bearings of the special matter they 

 are rendering into English. An example of 

 this kind is furnished by the undue importance 

 attributed to Willey's paper on Peripatus novse- 

 brittanix. Important this paper undoubtedly 

 is as a description of facts, but one may doubt 

 whether Willey's speculations to the effect that 

 Peripatus was originally a viviparous form and 

 that species like P. oviparus are secondarily 

 modified in their breeding habits, would have 

 been given so much weight by the critical Ger- 

 man authors as to lead them to alter their 



statement (p. 212) that "although the eggs of 

 some species of Peripatus have little, or even 

 no yolk, it is highly probable that they are to 

 be traced back to eggs rich in yolk, like those 

 of P. novse-zealandise.''' Wllley unfortunately 

 involved the insect embryo in his speculations 

 and here, too, the translators, without a vestige 

 of critical caution, enthusiastically refer the 

 student to the various homologies of the ' tro- 

 phoblast.' 



Such matters are of little importance, how- 

 ever, and are readily overlooked in the perusal 

 of the flexible English rendering of the admir- 

 ably lucid German text. The book is an in- 

 valuable addition to the collection of handbooks 

 required in every zoological laboratory both in 

 this country and in England. 



William Morton Whebleb. 



Bulletin of the United States Fish Commission, 

 Vol. XVIII., 1898. By Geoege M. Bowers, 

 Commissioner. Washington, Government 

 Printing Office. Pp. 576. Plates 128. 

 The bound volume of the Bulletin for 1898 is 

 the largest, and at the same time one of the 

 most interesting, of the series of eighteen num- 

 bers which have appeared since 1881. In a 

 prefatory note. Commissioner Bowers dwells 

 upon the importance of the scientific work that 

 has been carried on by those enjoying the privi- 

 leges of the biological laboratory at Woods 

 Hole, and his statement that "by affording 

 facilities to those persons who may profit by the 

 use of the material available at its various sta- 

 tions, the Commission not only aids in the gen- 

 eral progress of science, but extends its own 

 field of usefulness " will be heartily endorsed 

 both by the many who have already profited by 

 the liberality of the Commission, and by men 

 of science generally. 



The first article, beautifully illustrated, is by 

 Commander Moser, now with Mr. Agassiz in the 

 Pacific, and is a report on the operations of the 

 .4Z6afro8S during the summer, autumn, and early 

 winter of 1897. It is a history of the ' Salmon 

 and Salmon Fisheries of Alaska,' told in a 

 straightforward way, and contains historical, 

 geographical and biological data of present in- 

 terest and of permanent value. Inasmuch as 

 the output of salmon for a single year, 1897, 



