366 Notices of Scientific Works. [July, 



with which this symmetry can be shown to be unreal. We could point 

 to more than one book, whose numerous editions testify to their 

 numerous readers, written on this principle. In the "Introduction" 

 before us, if we miss a little of the charm of a completeness, easily 

 attained when men construct animal kingdoms out of their own 

 imaginings, we recognize in every page the far more substantial 

 advantage of a severely conscientious truthfulness. Scarcely a fact 

 of broad and general application is stated, that has not the " but," 

 which introduces all the exceptions to it, immediately after ; and it 

 will be a great satisfaction to the student of the book to know that, 

 however much he may have to supplement the knowledge it affords 

 him as the science of comparative anatomy may advance, he will 

 have little or nothing to unlearn. . 



The admirable calmness and temper displayed when the passing 

 discussion of any biological theory is rendered necessary; the 

 carefulness with which conclusions which are merely probable are 

 distinguished from others that bear the stamp of certainty ; the 

 evenness with which the balance is held between opposing probabi- 

 lities — as for example at pp. xxv. and clxii. respectively, where the 

 theories of evolution and of the existence of a regnum yrotisticum 

 are reviewed; and the readiness everywhere manifested to accept 

 any new truth when proved, coupled with a cautiousness in dispa- 

 raging the old simply because it is so, cannot fail to exercise a 

 wholesome influence on the mind of the reader. 



In two ways we venture to think the value of this part might 

 be enhanced. First, by the addition to it of some such glossary as 

 that appended by Dr. Pye Smith to Professor Huxley's " Introduc- 

 tion." Secondly, by the devotion of a single figure and about a page 

 of description to the elucidation of the constituent parts of a complete 

 vertebra ; in the absence of which the student is referred, at p. 9, 

 Part II., to Professor Owen's ' Descriptive Catalogue,' a work not 

 easily obtained, except by those living in Metropolitan or University 

 towns. 



The second part consists of the descriptions of fifty preparations 

 obtained from representative, and for the most part easily procurable 

 animals, such as the rat, pigeon, common fowl, frog, perch, cray- 

 fish, &c. While they are so clear as to enable the student easily to 

 recognize in the preparation before him its anatomical details, or to 

 make the preparation for himself if he has not access to a museum 

 containing it, they are something more than mere descriptive sketches 

 of the particular animals under consideration. Each serves as a text 

 for a discourse on the entire class, and side by side with the account 

 of every organ are allusions to homologous organs of creatures in 

 allied orders. With the descriptive anatomy of the common cray- 

 fish, for example, are frequent comparisons of its different parts with 

 those of other Decapods, both brachyurous and macrourous; of Iso- 



