NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS. 199 
selection. Darwin supposes that, in such cases, the adornment of 
the male has been transmitted, through inheritance, to the female. 
Sex, we may suppose, would direct the admiration, and, thus sup- 
ported, the beauty should not pall, through being shared. Also, on 
my hypothesis of purposeless actions, due to sexual excitement, being 
the raw material out of which display, more properly speaking, has 
sprung, one might expect admiration (by which I mean sexual 
response, through eye-dazzlement), on the part of the female, to 
precede any consciousness of exhibition in the male, so that selection 
might well have proceeded some way before this latter element began 
to dawn.—HpmunpD SELOoUvs. 


NOUE ECTS Os NE Wi BOOKS: 

Reptiles, Amphibia, Fishes, and Lower Chordata. By R. Lyprxxer, 
J. T. Cunnincuam, G. A. Bounencer, and J. A. THomson. 
Methuen & Co., Ltd. 
Tats book is more largely evolutionary in principle and 
bionomical in treatment than any work of the kind which has 
appeared in recent years; it marks the trend of modern biological 
conclusions, and should satisfy the aim of Mr. Pycraft, who 
projected the series, but owing to ill-health was compelled to 
hand over the editorship to Mr. Cunningham. 
The chapter on the coloration of reptiles and its interpreta- 
tion is a cautious and well-reasoned summary ofa subject which 
is too often treated with a wealth of theoretical imagination. 
The solution of the coloration problem cannot be achieved by 
the study of its appearance in the Insecta alone and in Lepi- 
doptera particularly; it must be studied in a wider field, and 
will then obtain a wider interpretation. The coloration of fishes 
is still, in all its phases, a question which has not yet reached 
a demonstrative explanation. 
The evolutionary record of the animals treated in this book 
is not divorced from paleontology ; by a knowledge of the past 
we can understand the foundations of the present fauna of the 
planet; when we know it thoroughly, if the past will ever be 
unravelled, the future will also be divulged. This volume is one 
