1870.] Notices of Scientific Works. 365 



or at least no more good than any other able treatise on the subject. 

 It is designed as an aid to the practical worker ; not to burden his 

 memory and confirm him in the enervating habit of receiving on 

 trust statements which ought to be verified by observation, but to 

 educate him into the way of educating himself. Though written 

 primarily for the benefit of students of the University of Oxford, 

 in the museum of which institution an illustrative series of prepara- 

 tions exists, we think we have said enough already to prove that its 

 advantages need by no means be limited to them ; but that it will 

 prove most useful to all those who desire, like we did in our own 

 student days, a reliable guide by which to work. To go through the 

 book as the author designs it to be gone through, and as the reader 

 for his own sake should make up his mind to go through it, will 

 involve both time and labour ; but they will be time and labour well 

 expended. 



There are three parts to the work. First, an introduction, 

 "giving a classification of the animal kingdom, with a zootomical 

 account of the various sub-kingdoms and their subordinate divisions 

 and classes." Secondly, a " description of certain readily procurable 

 specimens, which illustrate in the concrete a very large number of 

 the systematic descriptions contained in the introduction;" and 

 thirdly, descriptions of figures supplementary to the descriptions of 

 specimens, and designed to aid those specimens in " furnishing that 

 groundwork of particular facts, without which it is impossible to 

 obtain any real knowledge or permanent hold of general principles." 

 This endeavour to erect the principles of the science on a firm basis 

 of fact, which the student is taught how to observe for himself, is 

 the unique and most valuable feature of the book. 



Of the three parts, the first consists of 168 pages, and is recom- 

 mended in the preface to be studied after the preparations and spe- 

 cimens whose descriptions succeed it. We do not quite see, as these 

 are to be read first (as they undoubtedly should be, and that too as 

 a commentary on actual specimens ; all the better if actually made 

 by the reader), why they should be placed second. This is a matter 

 of small moment perhaps, except that a book is generally written in 

 the order in which it is intended to be read; and that a good many 

 people either pass over prefaces altogether, or read them just as 

 authors write them, namely, after they have finished the works to 

 which they are intended to be the real introductions. One of the. 

 most striking features of this first part is its extreme truthfulness. 

 No attempt is made to construct a completer system than Nature her- 

 self has given. Everything in it is reliable, because in everything 

 Nature has been followed, not led. Nothing is easier than to fix on 

 some one character as a basis, on which a zoological system can be 

 constructed, whose symmetry and philosophic completeness shall 

 captivate the mere reader of zoology — nothing, except the readiness. 



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