280 Recent Literature. [ April, 
more careful to breed from no other. Whether care or careless- 
ness will be most promoted by our present system I leave for you 
tosay. But I do wish that we might have at least a few breeders 
with time, means, caution, skill and patience, who would work 
with earnest zeal to not only keep all the excellence we now 
have, but to augment this excellence, as I am sure it may be 
augmented. 
But if our cheap queen system is to continue, then, surely, we 
may well stimulate frequent importations from Italy and Cyprus, 
and thus hope to compensate in part for what will be lost by 
hasty, careless and indiscriminate breeding.—American Bee Four- 
nal. 
we 
RECENT LITERATURE. 
BREHM’S ANIMAL Lire.\—This volume treats of the fishes, and 
is smaller than the others of the series. Beginning with the Dip- 
noans, the larger part of the space is devoted to the bony fishes, 
closing with the Selachians, the Cyclostomata and Amphioxus. 
The style is highly popular, as few anatomical details are given, 
but the text is taken up with very general accounts of the natural 
history of the more interesting species, with popularized illustra- 
tions in wood and full-page copper plates. In the preliminary 
glance at the life of fishes in general, their structure and physiol- 
ogy, habitats, distribution, habits and mode of development are, 
as well as fisheries and fish culture, briefly discussed. The Dip- 
noans are too briefly disposed of, only the Protopterus or lung- 
fish of Africa being figured and described; nothing is said of the 
Australian lung-fish (Ceratodus), nor of the relations of the Dip- 
noans to their mesozoic ancestors. The opportunity of working 
up a fresh and attractive account of the most interesting group of 
fishes in existence is not taken, and this part is nearly twenty 
years behind the times. The bony fishes are finely illustrated, 
the drawings of the eel, lump-fish and goose-fish, for example, 
being particularly good. We should have liked to have learned 
more of the singular breeding habits of the sea-horse ; as to the 
garpike the reader is left in ignorance of its breeding habits so 
well known in this country, and the ganoids are too briefly treat- 
ed; Ammoceetes is still regarded as an adult fish, though well 
known to be simply a young lamprey. On the whole, however, 
the volume is interesting and attractive, and so rich in good illus- 
trations as to be of considerable value to the naturalist. 
1 Brehm’s Thierleben. Achte Band. Die Fische. Von Dr. A. E. BREHM. 114 
cuts and 11 plates. Leipzig, 1879. 8°, pp. 426. For sale by B. Westermann & Co., 
-New York. 
