138 Literary Notices. 



class, there being, as we believe, no other in which the recent 

 philosophy of the transformations which living beings undergo from 

 the egg to their complete development, is so fully explained. This 

 work of M. Quatrefages is very superior to his Rambles of a 

 Naturalist, which was too egotistic and too diffuse, and we are very 

 glad that it has fallen into the hands of a translator of sufficient 

 attainments to do justice to its great merits. M. Quatrefages' 

 views on that method of reproduction which Professor Owen calls 

 " Parthenogenesis " are much in accordance with those put forward 

 by Dr. Carpenter, and the various facts and considerations which 

 he adduces will be generally considered fatal to the Owen hypothesis. 

 He does not, however, deny that certain cases occur to which Mr. 

 Owen's term may be fairly applied. He says, " notwithstanding my 

 reservations, parthenogenesis is still to my mind a constant pheno- 

 menon. With my confreres, I believe that there exist true females 

 which deposit genuine ova, that are developed without any interven- 

 tion on the part of the male. But I believe this phenomenon is 

 far less frequent than has been supposed." M. Quatrefages wisely 

 abstains from dogmatizing on this curious question, but he remarks 

 that among certain animals the infecundated ovum has been shown 

 to exhibit a series of movements " quite analogous to those which 

 in the fecund ovum correspond to the formation of a new being," 

 and he conceives that if in certain cases the vital force of the ovum 

 is intensified, the interposition of the male may be dispensed with, 

 and the incidents of the case may still be associated with the ordi- 

 nary phenomena of generation. Broadly considered there will re- 

 main two modes of reproduction — one by buds, through which 

 whole generations may arise as the consequence of an original crea- 

 ture having sprung from a true egg fecundated by a male — and 

 another by a recurrence to the co-operation of a male and female 

 parent giving birth to a fresh individual, from which new generations 

 may again spring through the budding process. M. Quatrefages 

 deserves great credit for exhibiting a most important mass of vital 

 phenomena in their true scientific co-ordination. He has given 

 us the results of his researches in a form that possesses a high de- 

 gree of literary merit, and Dr. Lawson's translation, which we have 

 carefully compared with the original, is justly described in a pub- 

 lished letter of M. Quatrefages as aussi elegante que fidele. 



Sight and Touch ; an Attempt to Disprove the Received (or 

 Berkleian) Theory of "Vision. By Thomas K. Abbott, MA., 

 .Fellow and Tutor of TrinitylCollege, Dublin. (Longmans.) — This is 

 an elaborate attack upon the received theories of vision, according 

 to which the eye is incapable of judging of size, distance, and real 

 figure, until touch and other senses have been called into play, and 

 have afforded a set of associations which may be made use of in 

 interpreting visual impressions. Mr. Abbott contends that in 

 " the eye, and the eye alone, there is a determinate sensation or 

 state of the organ corresponding to a determinate distance of the 

 object;" and that thus distance is directly perceived. We may not 

 exactly apprehend the sense in which this statement is made, as in 

 some places the writer appears to affirm his proposition absolutely, 



