240 TEE ZOOLOGIST. 



a question of the most transcendental importance, the universality 

 of death (?). The well-known theory of Weismann and others, 

 supported by the weighty enunciation of Prof. Bay Lankester, as 

 to the " deathlessness " of the Protozoan cell, can only be referred 

 to, and not argued here ; but at least it can be proposed that the 

 mystery of death is at least equal to that of life, of which we hear 

 so much more. 



The main object in the preparation of this work, we are told, 

 " was to bring together, as concisely and accurately as possible, 

 in a single manual, all that has been so far discovered regarding 

 the British Freshwater Bhizopoda and their near allies, the 

 Heliozoa." It is thus a distinct addition to the means of study- 

 ing another branch of British zoology, and we are promised a 

 bibliography of these organisms by Mr. Hopkinson, which will 

 appear as a future volume. In classification, the term Conchu- 

 lina has been substituted for Testacea, which is preoccupied in 

 Mollusca. There are sixteen excellent plates, and in this, as in 

 previous volumes, the members of the Bay Society act as pioneers 

 in the still very far from exhausted field of British zoology. 



A Pocket-Book of British Birds. By E. F. M. Elms, 



West, Newman & Co. 

 The contents of this little book have been so clearly and 

 tersely stated on the cover of our last issue as to leave little more 

 to be said on the subject. It is to a very great extent a compila- 

 tion, which is a necessity if any work of the kind is to be com- 

 prehensive, and compilation is a word which frequently bears a 

 wrong signification. Mr. Elms has endeavoured in a small 

 compass to give, in a condensed form, very much information 

 regarding our British birds, and he has succeeded in producing 

 an inexpensive volume which well deserves to be a "pocket-book" 

 for those who wish to become field ornithologists. We are quite 

 certain that if this publication is rightly used and faithfully con- 

 sulted, any field naturalist may obtain a thorough introduction to 

 a knowledge of the birds he may meet on his rambles, and it 

 should be slipped in the pocket by those taking a summer holiday, 

 who are not in the strict sense of the word already ornithologists. 

 If its readers also endeavour to supplement its notes, and test 

 its information, it will not have been written in vain, and will 

 thoroughly achieve its object. 



