No. 397.] REVIEWS OF RECENT LITERATURE. 61 
at least, new figures representing the old object (Ex. Figs. 4, 6, 116, 
118, 140) 
There is a small number of the inevitable verbal errors, of which 
may be noted : foramen lacerus anterior (p. 164), Fascia used as a 
plural (p. 112), and Malapterus (p. 115). 
A New Text-Book on the Nervous System. — No field of zoólo- 
gical research has been more assiduously cultivated or has yielded 
more important results in the last decade than the nervous system. 
While the cell theory and the interpretation of most tissues in con- 
formity with it are matters of history, the conception of the nervous 
system as an association of cells dates really from 1891. With the 
enunciation of the neurone theory by Waldeyer in that year, a new 
era in the study of the nervous system began; and though this 
theory may require modification even in some fundamental respects, 
it has been undoubtedly a most important factor in bringing order 
into what was neurological chaos. The result of this clarifying 
influence has been, not only an enormous productivity in effective 
research, but the appearance of several high-grade text-books deal- 
ing with the nervous system from the new standpoint. Ramon y 
Cajal's well-known brochure heads the list as the first consistent 
attempt to describe the nervous system of the higher animals as an 
aggregate of neurones. The same principle was adopted in van 
Gehuchten's text-book, and to a less extent in the more conservative 
treatises by Edinger and by von Lenhossék, and is accepted by the 
well-known American neurologist, L. F. Barker, in his new text-book 
entitled Zhe Nervous System and its Constituent Neurones." 
The book, though divided into six sections, which are further sub- 
divided into chapters, falls naturally into two parts: the first, com- 
prising the first five sections of a little over 300 pages, contains a 
general account of the structure and physiology of the nervous unit 
or neurone ; and the second, including only the sixth section of some 
650 pages, presents a descriptive account of the groups of neurones 
constituting the nervous system of man and other higher mammals. 
o the general reader the first five sections are naturally the more 
interesting. The first section is given to an historical account of the 
development of the neurone concept. This opens with a description 
1 Barker, L. F. Zhe Nervous System and its Constituent Neurones, designed 
for the Use of Practitioners of Medicine and of Students of Medicine and Psy- 
chology. New York, Appleton & Co. xxxii + 1122 pp. 676 Uia Hon, and 
2 colored plates 
