269 
Part Two is really a manual of economic, medicinal, and 
poisonous plants, the poisonous plants being treated from the 
toxicological and veterinary standpoints chiefly. While the 
book contains a fund of information valuable to the physician, 
botanist, and layman, its greatest usefulness will doubtless be 
to students of animal industry and in particular to the veterinary 
practitioner. 
The great number of illustrations and half-tone plates add to 
the value of the book. The paper is good. The subject matter 
is nicely spaced and arranged, and printed in good readable type. 
WILLIAM MANSFIELD 
COLLEGE OF PHARMACY, 
OLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 
Scharff’s Distribution and Origin of Life in America * 
This is an octavo book of 497 pages, including 32 of bibliog- 
raphy and 26 of index, both of which important features are 
comprehensive and well arranged for quick and easy reference. 
The illustrations, twenty-one in number, are maps, which are in 
part designed to indicate the theoretical land and water conditions 
in certain periods of Mesozoic and Neozoic time, and in part to 
show the known distribution, past and present, of certain specific 
and family types of animal life in America. 
As a compendium of recognized facts in paleogeography and 
the distribution of the faunal elements discussed the work is 
useful and valuable; but in certain other respects it may better 
be designated merely as “interesting,” especially in connection 
with some of the theories advanced by the author to account for 
some of the facts discussed, and the more or less ex parte manner 
in which authorities are cited and quoted in support of the 
author's views and contentions. In fact those who are not well 
acquainted with the literature of the subject might infer, from 
the text, that certain theories not generally accepted had a 
preponderating weight of authority in their favor. 
In fairness to the author, however, it should be said that he is 
quite frank in disclaiming an unprejudiced attitude in relation 
* Scharff, R.S. Distribution and Origin of Lifein America. Рр. i-xvi + 1-497, 
f. 1-21. New York, The Macmillan Company, 1912. Price $3.00. 
