798 Recent Literature, [ November, 
water being the mineral chiefly referred to for the sake of illustra- 
tion, and (B) living bodies. Under the latter head the wheat plant 
and the substances of which it is composed, the common fowl and 
the substances of which it is composed, are described in the com- 
pass of three pages ; then the constituents of the body common to 
the wheat plant and the fowl. What is meant by the word living, 
and how the living plant comports itself, and how the living animal 
grows, and how living bodies differ from mineral bodies is told in 
a few clear, simple sentences. Finally the science of biology and 
its subdivisions, botany and zodlogy, are defined, and a final page 
or two is devoted to mental phenomena and the definition of 
psychology. 
EMERTON’S SEASIDE CoLLECTING.! — In England and France 
popular works on the animals of the seashore, and the names of 
Gosse, Forbes, Kingsley and Quatrefages are associated with 
some of the most entertaining books that have ever been written. 
America, on the other hand, has been wofully deficient in works 
_of this character. The only ones which approach it being Mrs. 
Agassiz’s Seaside Studies, Verrill and Smith’s Invertebrata of 
Vineyard sound, and the charming little work of “ Actaea.” In 
the present volume Mr. Emerton has given us a well illustrated 
account of the common marine forms of invertebrates with the 
methods of collecting them. The work is written in Mr. Emet- 
ton’s straightforward manner, and from a literary point of view 1s 
superior to his well-known volume on spiders. A fair proportion 
of the 161 figures which illustrate the book are new, while the 
` remainder have not been copied often enough to render them at 
all hackneyed. The pictures of Lophothuria fabricii and Pentacta - 
frondosa are possibly the best. “Here we would remark that the 
as 7 ’ , 
credit on the publisher. — % S, K. 
ZITTEL’S PALÆONTOLOGY.?—The third part of Vol. 1 of this im- 
portant work especially commends itself to American palæontolo- 
gists, since it continues and completes the elaborate account O 
1 Life on the Seashore, or Animals of our Coasts and Bays. By James H. EMER- 
TON. vo, pp. XX and 143. Salem, George A. Bates, 1880. 
2 Handbuch der Paleontology. Unter mitwirkung von W. PH. SCHIMP 
mpER. Hera 
gegeben von Karl A. Zittel. 1 Band, 11 Lieferung, mit 195 original holzschnitten. 
Miinchen, 1879, 8vo. 
