48 Recent Literature. [January, 
The first important acquisition leading to this end was aérial res- 
piration ; the second, rapid nutrition by hot blood. And as es- — 
sential to the production and preservation of these, improvements 
in organs of movement have been superadded to every successive 
type of life. 
Consciousness remainsas the unresolvable factor in the process ; 
as at once the measure of, and respondent to a large class of phe- 
nomena. 
:0: 
RECENT LITERATURE. 
Coox’s Biotocy.'—It appears that the author of this book, after 
ee his theological studies, exhausted the study of biology 
the course of a summer’s vacation by lying on his back on 
i “ Bioplast Beach,” reading Beale on the Microscope. and some of 
the popular books of Huxley and Haeckel on the Darwinian 
question. This be an excellent way to get up a course of 
sensational ree for an audience of clergymen and others who 
wish to be amused after their Sunday toil, but until we have some 
evidence that the author personally made the acquaintance of the 
weeds, snails, and other creatures living about this romantic Bio- 
plast Beach, and spent a number of years studying their structure, 
development, and classification, we fear that the book must be set — 
down as a burlesque on- biology. The title, even, is misleading. 
The book should more properly be dubbed Romance of Natural 
Theology. No naturalist will want to waste time over it, and the 
lay as well as the clerical reader should look with no little suspi- 
cion upon the distorted science and sensational statements scat- 
tered through its pages. The Preludes are much better to our — 
mind than the Biology. 
VauGHan’s OSTEOLOGY AND MYOLOGY or THE Domestic FowL’ : 
—An account of the skeleton and muscles of the common fowl; _ 
such as this, will prove of much use to one beginning the study — 
of anatomy. This book is well prepared and fully illustrated, and 4 
will be of service in the laboratory. 
Tue GEOLOGICAL RECORD For 1875.*—This volume is of the — 
same nature as the one issued last year, though it is larger, im- 
proved in its plan, and contains an index of new species, whic 
will add to its ihe in the eye of the palzontologist. As the 
1 Biology: with aee on Current Events. By JosepH Cook. Boston: James : 
20; PP» 325- 
a 
R. Osgood & Co. 
2 Notes on the Outlay and Myology of the Domestic Fowl. ( Gallus domesticus): 
AN, Ph. D. Sheehan & Co., Ann Arbor, Mich. 1876. 13m9, — 
pp. 116. 
pepe © ae tee Std for 1875. An acon of Works on Geology, Mineralogy : 
~ and Palæontology, published during the year. Edited by WILLIAM WHITA pa 
Pa London: Taylor and Takak 1877. 8vo, si 443: ; : E 
