June 22, 1900.] 



SCIENCE. 



981 



ists and enthusiasts, many of them without 

 notable experience as teachers, and to permit 

 them to correct, revise, or even rewrite as each 

 thinlis fit : the very boldness of the attempt 

 deserves success. But when the original author 

 is representative of the somewhat conservative 

 European school of thought, and his revisers 

 are for the most part leading exponents of revo- 

 lutionary American ideas, then who can wonder 

 if the result is curious rather than satisfactory ? 

 Professor von Zittel would be the last person to 

 claim infallibility, and it is not surprising that 

 the enormous mass o£ detail condensed into his 

 ' Grundziige der Palseontologie ' should contain 

 some removable errors. Dr. Eastman might 

 with advantage have done one of two things. He 

 might have given us a translation of the ' Grund- 

 ziige ' with these errors corrected by his corps 

 of specialists ; or he might have sketched out 

 the plan of a new work, in which the phylo- 

 genetic and morphogenetic principles of Pro- 

 fessors Hyatt, Beecher and others should have 

 had free play. But what we have here is neither 

 one thing nor the other. The mistakes of the 

 original are in very many cases still uncorrected, 

 often added to in somewhat inexplicable fashion 

 (as when Wachsmuth alters the correct ' Holo- 

 erinua W. u. Spr.' to the incorrect ' Solocrinus, 

 Jaekel'); on the other hand, the opinions of 

 the Munich professors, which after all are en- 

 titled to some respect, have as often as not 

 been brushed aside, and some new and untried 

 scheme of classification put in their place. The 

 unity of the work, as the author's own preface 

 points out, has been destroyed, and the student 

 is presented on the supposed authority of Zittel 

 with views opposed not merely to those of that 

 eminent paleontologist, but often to one another. 

 The climax is reached when most of the genera 

 referred on pp. 102 et sq., to the Chsetetidse and 

 Fistuliporidce, families of Anthozoa, are re- 

 peated under Br5'ozoa as Cerioporidse (p. 266), 

 Fistuliporidffi (p. 269), Monticuliporidse (p. 272), 

 Heterotrypidse (p. 373), Calloporidfe (p. 274), 

 and Batostomellidffi (p. 277). We are left won- 

 dering what is to become of Chsstetes (which no 

 doubt is a coral) and Labechia (which is prob- 

 ably a Stromatoporoid). In this way the ele- 

 mentary student is fogged, while the more 

 advanced student is uncertain on whose au- 



thority doubtful or novel statements are made. 

 And possibly some may think that the adver- 

 tisement of this book as a ' Text-book of Pale- 

 ontology by Karl A. von Zittel ' is an unwar- 

 rantable use of a famous name and an abuse of 

 the professor's well-known kindness. 



After this protest it is pleasant to be able to 

 express gratitude for much of the fare with 

 which the enterprise of Dr. Eastman and 

 Messrs. Macmillan has provided us ; and more 

 particularly are thanks due to the many special- 

 ists who have undertaken a difficult and un- 

 grateful task. 



English speaking readers should be glad to 

 have Professor von Zittel's admirable Introduc- 

 tion in more accessible form. The translation 

 is flowing without being much too free ; but the 

 statement (on p. 8) that "many fossil crinoids 

 before maturity resemble the living genus An- 

 tedon" is not the same as "many fossil crinoids 

 may be compared with the young stages of the 

 living genus Antedon.^' To say that the appli 

 cation of the term ' fossil ' to any organic re- 

 mains is determined solely by ' the geological 

 age of the formation in which they occur,' is 

 unnecessarily to exaggerate a restriction which 

 Professor von Zittel has already made too 

 strong. An explorer in a new country finds a 

 cliff containing shells or bones ; these eventu- 

 ally prove to be of identical species with ani- 

 mals now living in the neighborhood, and it is 

 inferred that the rock has been formed and ele- 

 vated within the historic period. The observa- 

 tion is a geological observation, and the argu- 

 ment is precisely the same as it would have 

 been had the organisms proved of Cretaceous 

 age. Why should the remains be called fossils 

 in one case and not in the other? The true 

 criterion seems to be that ' fossils ' have been 

 buried by natural causes. Thus one emphasizes 

 that uniformity of geological operations which 

 Professor Zittel's qualification tends to obscure. 



The chronological table would have been of 

 more service to those for whom the translation 

 is intended, had the gallicised terms of the 

 last column been replaced, so far as possible, by 

 American equivalents. It is hard to see the 

 point of ' Danian Series (Danien), Senonian 

 Series (Senonien) ' and so on. 



The chapters on Protozoa and Coelenterata, 



