NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS. 35 



the Myxosporidiida are a deadly scourge to fish and silkworms. 

 Then again their relation to the problem as to whether plants 

 and animals in primitive forms are capable of demarcation is a 

 most important one, for, as Dr. Calkins points out, Buffon wrote 

 as early as 1749 : " We are led to conclude that there is no 

 absolute and essential distinction between the animal and vege- 

 table kingdoms."* 



We might further digress on the many interests attached to 

 the Protozoa. What are the bionomics of these living unicellular 

 structures ; and has not immortality been ascribed to their 

 method of reproduction by simple division ? But we will refer 

 all enquirers to the book itself. It is a volume which describes 

 what to most people is an unknown life in an unseen world, and 

 is another instance of the good work now being done in America. 



The Birds of South Africa. By Arthur C. Stark, M.B. ; com- 

 pleted by W. L. Sclater, M.A., F.Z.S. Vol. II. K. H. 

 Porter. 



The second volume of this excellent monograph has appeared, 

 and possesses a somewhat melancholy interest. Dr. Stark, the 

 original author, and whose portrait is given as a frontispiece, was 

 slain by a Boer shell during the siege of Ladysmith. The 

 manuscript that was left behind by the deceased ornithologist 

 has been placed in the hands of the Director of the South 

 African Museum, who, with necessary revision and additions, 

 has produced this volume, and will, we are glad to learn, bring 

 the work to a conclusion in two final volumes. 



The present publication continues the description of the 

 Passeres, commencing with the Laniidce, and concluding with the 

 Pittidcs. It thus includes the Warblers, a group which in the 

 Transvaal the writer of this notice found was very imperfectly 

 known, and probably insufficiently collected. These birds only 

 attract the attention of the earnest ornithologist, and as a rule 



* This view must have had considerable vogue in France, and is pro- 

 bably the derivation of the' remark lately attributed by Lord Rosebery to 

 Napoleon — " The plant is the first link in a chain of which man is the 

 last " (' Napoleon, the Last Phase,' p. 170). 



