78 Scientific Intelligence. 



earth, air, and water. Then the " physicochemical origins of 

 life" are considered, followed by a study of the "energy evo- 

 lution" of plants and the "evolution of animal form."' The 

 four complexes of energy at the basis of life are (1) inorganic 

 environment, (2) the organism, (3) the heredity germ, and (4) 

 life environment. 



If the reader is to put himself in accord with the book, he 

 will first read the Preface, scan the succeeding pages, and take 

 up for study Part II, following this with a study of Part I and 

 the Introdxu'tion, and then end with a re-reading of the Preface. 

 Of course this is a long road to the attaining of Professor 

 Osborn's point of view, and yet the effort will be worth the 

 reader's time. If the reader follows this course, he will be more 

 than ever impressed with the extraordinary complexities 

 involved in the evolution of life, and with the fact that the sub- 

 ject can not be understood without a general knowledge of the 

 evolution of that matter out of which organic bodies and the 

 manifestations of life are evolved. Though our search for causes 

 of the evolution of living matter began with Buffon 150 years 

 ago, our insight into them has only just begun. c. s. 



3. The Cretaceous Faunas of the North-eastern Part of the 

 South Island of New Zealand; by Henry Woods. New Zealand 

 Geol. Survey, Pal. Bull. No. 4, 1917, 41 pp., 20 pis., 2 figs, 

 (maps). — In this memoir are described by a specialist sixteen 

 species of bivalves (six new) from the earlier Cretaceous 

 (Albian) and fifty-one (twenty new) from the Senonian. About 

 one third of the forms are unnamed specifically. It is interest- 

 ing to note that the fossils of the southern hemisphere are being 

 studied more and more by paleontologists from the northern 

 one. It is in this way that we shall finally learn to know the 

 actual differences between the life of any given time in the two 

 hemispheres, and the reviewer sees no danger at all that the 

 paleontologists of the north will see the fossils of the austral 

 region too much in the light of their own environment, c. s. 



4. New and Little Known Gastropoda, from the Upper Creta- 

 ceous of Tennessee; by Bruce "Wade. Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci. 

 Philadelphia, Sept., 1917, pp. 280-304, pis. 17-19.— This inter- 

 esting paper describes eight new genera and seventeen new 

 species of gastropods out of a total of 151 forms of this class 

 of mollusks in a fauna of more than 350 species. c. s. 



5. The "Mark Stirrup" Collection of Fossil Insects from 

 the Coal Measures of C ommentry {Allier) , Central France; by 

 Herbert Bolton. Mem. and Proc. Manchester Lit. and Phil. 

 Soc, vol. 61, pt. 1, 1917. 23 pp., 5 pis. — In this good paper are 

 described two new genera of late Paleozoic insects, along with 

 eight species of which two had been made known heretofore. 



c. s. 



6. Fossil Plants from Bolivia and their Bearing upon the 

 Age of Uplift of the Eastern Andes; by Edward "W. Berry. 

 Proc. U. S. Nat. Mus., vol. 54, 1917, pp. 103-164, pis. 15-18.— In 



