1881.] | Recent Literature, 127 
RECENT LITERATURE. 
REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES FOR 
1878.\—This bulky volume is a valuable contribution to applied 
zoology, a subject in which the United States is, happily, nearly 
if not quite on a par with France or Germany, if not excelling 
those countries. The times are now ripe for the people of this 
country to receive from scientific men the fruits of the application 
of the scientific knowledge which has been stored up in museums 
and libraries ; and fortunately this process, as seen by the work 
of the U. S. Fish Commission, in the end aids in the true develop- 
ment of science. From “ skin and bone” zodlogy, preserved fish, 
trays of labeled fish-bones and “species work,” to the study 
of the habits of fishes, their distribution in geographical exten- 
sion and in vertical range, their relations to one another, 
and to the world of invertebrate animals on which they rely for 
subsistence, their embryology, their relations to the physics of 
the sea—these are questions of abstruse and philosophic import, 
as well as of purely practical, economic moment. Thus in fish- 
breeding as in star-gazing or gas-making, the solution of the 
deepest problems of science go hand in hand with the commonest, 
most trivial operations and needs of our everyday life. And 
human life has now become so composite and differentiated, our 
population is growing so dense, and the means of living for the 
masses so much more precarious, that what is now wasted must 
eventually be converted into wealth, and the practical application 
of science must be brought to bear in the solution of these eco- 
nomic problems. bene 
The report before us is a due commingling of purely scientific 
research with practical essays on fish-breeding and fisheries. The 
discovery of new food-fishes; the best and speediest means of 
propagating and restocking our coast and inland waters, the 
mechanical contrivances, nets and apparatus for hatching,'and 
similar subjects, with voluminous extracts from, and translations 
of, European articles, are presented in this as in former volumes. 
With such practical matter is combined some excellent work in» 
pure zodlogy, viz.: a report on the marine Isopoda of New 
England and adjacent waters, by Oscar Harger, with thirteen 
well executed plates; and a report on the Pycnogonida of New 
England and adjacent waters, by Edmund B. Wilson, with seven 
plates. These papers will be noticed elsewhere in this journal. 
Professor Baird concludes his report with the suggestion that 
as a possible result of the application of steam to fish-hatching 
apparatus, we may be able to so multiply the number of our cod, 
mackerel, herring and halibut, “as to obviate the necessity in the 
1 United States Commission of Fish and Fisheries. Part v1. Report of the Com- 
missioner for 1878. A. Inquiry into the Decrease of Food-fishes. B. The Propa- 
nee ig Food-fishes in the waters of the United States. Washington, 1880. 8vo, 
Ppp- is ; 
