REVIEWS OF RECENT LITERATURE. 
ZOOLOGY. 
Jayne’s Skeleton of the Cat.!— When Mivart’s volume on the cat 
appeared some eighteen years ago, it was a common opinion that the 
high-water mark of popular scientific monographing had been nearly 
if not actually touched, and no one supposed that in less than two 
decades a work of almost twice the size of Mivart’s, and dealing with 
only the skeleton of the cat, would be placed before the public. This 
imposing volume, by Dr. Horace Jayne, forms the first part of a 
series on the complete anatomy of the cat. It consists of an intro- 
ductory chapter, in which are considered the chief divisions of the 
skeleton, methods of preparing bones, definitions of terms, etc., fol- 
lowed by an exhaustive description of the skeleton of the cat. This 
is arranged systematically, each group of bones being first briefly 
outlined and then the separate bones described in detail. After the 
anatomy of a bone has been minutely portrayed, there usually follows 
an account of its nomenclature, determination, articulations, muscu- 
lar attachments, ossification, variations, and finally its relations to 
the corresponding human bone. Although the subject-matter of the 
volume is so systematically arranged that any desired reference may 
be quickly and easily turned to, a well-devised index of some twenty- 
five pages has been appended. 
The importance of terminology in text-books of this character is 
well recognized, and in these days of revised nomenclatures one turns 
to a new anatomy for judgments. Dr. Jayne’s book will be gratifying 
chiefly to the conservatives, for, as a rule, he adheres to the older 
names good and bad alike. In his choice of general descriptive 
terms he is not always happy. Thus the system of general terms, 
proposed in the introduction, included the tautological phrase “ lateral 
side,” a misdemeanor which is atoned for by its almost complete 
omission from the body of the text. Nor is the use of special terms 
always carried out with success. In the description of the cervical 
vertebra, the vertebrarterial canal is variously called the arterial 
canal, the vertebral canal, the foramen for the vertebral artery, and 
the canal for vessels, and the only clue which the uninitiated are 
1 Jayne, Horace. Mammalian Anatomy, a Preparation for Human and Com- 
parative Anatomy. Pt. i. The Skeleton of the Cat. xix +816 pp. J. B. Lippincott 
Co., Philadelphia, 1898, 
