264 THE AMERICAN NATURALIST. [Vou. XXXIII. 
Gegenbaur’s Comparative Anatomy of Vertebrates.'— For some 
years past rumors of a revised edition of Gegenbaur’s Vergleichende 
Anatomie have been circulated by the European book-dealers, and 
even after the appearance of the masterly works of Lang, and of 
Korschelt and Heider, of Wiedersheim and of Hertwig, it must be 
confessed that the older text-book, if rewritten in the broad philo- 
sophical spirit that Gegenbaur accords to all his work, would have been 
no mean rival to the best that we have. Wisely or unwisely, Gegenbaur 
has not chosen to undertake the whole of this task, but has limited 
himself to a revision and expansion of only the vertebrate portion of 
his former text-book. The volume now published is about one-half 
of the new work, which even in its present state is more voluminous 
than the whole of the last edition of the Comparative Anatomy. The 
rest, we are told, is mostly written and may be expected within a year. 
When it is remembered that since the time of Owen no one perhaps 
has influenced the course of vertebrate comparative anatomy more 
profoundly than Gegenbaur, and that in the full strength of his years 
he now presents the results of a lifelong study, the monumental 
character of his work must be apparent. 
The present volume contains nearly a thousand pages. After an 
introductory section the following systems of organs are treated: the 
integument, the skeleton, the muscular system, the nervous system, 
and the sense organs. The text is in two sizes of type, the smaller 
being reserved for less important topics. As a rule, most topics are 
followed by a brief list of the more important papers dealing with 
them. There is no index, but an extremely methodical arrangement 
and a detailed table of contents make this omission less noticeable. 
The text is illustrated by 619 figures, some of which are colored. 
The paper and presswork, while not the best, are uniformly good. 
The new work is striking for the completeness with which the 
comparative method is applied. Thus, in the former editions, the 
integument of vertebrates was considered under three heads: the in- 
tegument proper, epidermal structures, including glands, and the 
dermal skeleton. In Wiedersheim’s Lehrbuch, which appeared some 
five years after Gegenbaur’s last edition, a classification of the sub- 
ject even to this slight extent was omitted, and the treatment of the 
integument lapsed into the purely descriptive ‘form of a section on 
the integument of each group of vertebrates. In the new volume 
1 Gegenbaur, C. Vergleichende Anatomie der Wirbelthiere mit Beriicksich- 
tigung der Wirbellosen. Erster Band. Leipzig, W. Engelmann (1898), xiv + 978 
pp-, 619 figs. 
