748 The American Naturalist. [August, 
of readers would be greatly diminished. Fiction, in fact, is the 
pioneer of the intellectual life, and many persons, more’s the 
pity, never get beyond it. Without it, they would never get so 
far. But many readers of fiction do better. Interest in a thou- 
sand subjects is suggested, especially history, biography, geogra- 
phy, metaphysics, social science, and what not. Some who 
begin by scoffing at science remain to pray at her shrine. And 
it is quite possible that society will ere long have a surfeit of 
fiction. Froth and sponge serve as an inflator of the mental 
stomach for a time, but they are apt to generate a taste for some- 
thing more solid as time passes on. If fact, mankind at large 
will, ere long, begin to suspect that the raw material of reality 
out of which the frail structures of fiction are built, must be of as 
much interest as are its products. On a little inspection they will 
find that truth is really stranger than fiction, as has been often 
said, and that there is an inexhaustible supply of it. From 
being readers of Balzac and Zola, they will become subscribers 
to and readers of the AMERICAN NATURALIST. 
RECENT BOOKS AND PAMPHLETS. 
, G.—Our Digestionssekretionem hos Insekter och este Bihang. 
Till k pact Vet. Akad. Handlingar, Band 16, 1890. 
ALLEN, I. A.—On the Maximilian Types of S S.A. Birds. Ext. Am. Mus. Nat Hist. 
N. Y., 1889. 
BAUR, G.—Revision meiner Mittheilungen im Zoologischen Anzeiger mit Nachträ- 
Separat-Abdruck aus dem Zoologischen Anzeiger, No. 306, 1889. peu: 
dur ceci Reptilien. Separat-Abdruck Zoologischen Anzeiger, No. 298, 1889.—Die 
Stellung von Dermochelys Blainv. Sonderabdruck aus Pine te 
en "Band IV., 1889. From the author. 
BEAN, T. H.—Description of a new Cottoid Fish collected by the U. S. Fish Com. 
Ext. Proc; U. S. — Vol. XII 
——. tes on Fishes EEE at Cosima, Yucatan, by U. S. Fish Commission, 
with TET of New Species. Ex. from Bull. U. S. Fish Commission, Vol. VIII. 
From the ai 
KER, G. 'F.—Silicic Acids. Ext. Am. Jour. Sci., Vol. XXXVIII., 1889. From 
the author. 
BOETTGER, O.—Die Entwicklung der Pupa-Arten des Mittelrheingebiets in Zeit 
und Raum buda Abdruck aus den Jahrbüchen des Nassauischen Vereins für Natur- 
kunde, Jahrgang 42, 
BOGNE, E. A = Study of the Visible Changes that take Ess during the pleni 
ment of Human Teeth and their Alveoli. Ext. Dental Cosmos, 1889. From J. M. White. 
