1890.] Zoology. 279 
There is a marked spirit of conservatism dominating every part of 
the work. We look in vain for any recognition of the somewhat radi- 
cal notions which have of late arisen in some quarters, The time- 
honored arrangement of orders, the time-honored genera, the time- 
honored rules as to capitalization, punctuation, and citation of authori- 
ties, are strictly adhered to. e Gymnosperms are still wedged in 
between monocotyledons and dicotyledons; Carya is Carya still, and 
not Hicoria; Nymphea is Nympheea still, and not Castalia; and even 
in so plain a matter as the spelling of Pirus, we have Pyrus, as in the 
older editions. All this, and much more like it, implies that for many 
years still the young botanists of America are to be made familiar with 
the older and quite conservative views of classification and arrange- 
ment. We had hoped for’something different. Meanwhile we are 
glad to get the book, for it was much needed.—CHARLES E. BESSEY. 
ZOOLOGY. 
Zoological News.—General.—The Verhandlungen der Gesell- 
© schaft für Erdkunde (Berlin), contains an account of the biological 
results of the Plankton Expedition of the summer of 1889, by Prof. K. 
Brandt, and of the voyage itself, by Dr. Krummer. The trip seems to 
have been confined to the Atlantic, and returned to Kiel on November 
7, after an absence of 115 days, and arun of 15,600 miles. The ex- 
perience of the expedition was that the ocean, even in the tropics, was 
poorer in life than the North Sea and Baltic. 
Protozoa.—The last report in Vol. XXXII. is by Ernst Haeckel, 
and concerns the curious group of organisms known as the Physemaria. 
- These Haeckel pronounces to be sponges of affinities to the Keratosa, 
but modified by symbiosis with a commensal which is in most, if not in 
all cases, a hydro-polyp stock. Four families and eleven genera are 
described. In the Stannomidz, examples of which were dredged at 
depths of from 2,425 to 2,925 fathoms, there is present a fibrillar 
Am. Nat.—March.—5. : 
na 
