802 The American Naturalist. [September, 
It was a very natural thing that Delage, after going over the ground 
that he did in the preparation of his great work on ‘“‘ Les grands prob- 
lèmes de la biologie générale ” should see the need of frequently gather- 
ing together and classifying the widely scattered data belonging to this 
field ; and thus came into existence the new annual, L’ Année Biologique, 
whose first number lies before us. 
Its scope is very broad. There are twenty general subjects treated 
in twenty chapters. These subjects are: 1, the cell; 2, the sexual 
products and fecondation; 3, parthenogenesis; 4, asexual reproduc- 
tion! 5, ontogenesis; 6, teratogenesis; 7, regeneration; 8, grafting ; 9, 
sex and secondary sexual characters ; 10, polymorphism, metamorphosis, 
and alternation of generations; 11, latent characters; 12, correlation; 
13, death, immortality, and the germ-plasm; 14, general morphology 
and physiology ; 15, heredity; 16, variation ; 17, the origin of species, 
phylogeny; 18, the geographic distribution of species; 19, mental 
functions ; 20, general theories—generalities. 
The organization of the journal is as follows: Professor Delage is 
the director of the serial, Dr. Georges Poirault is secretary of the 
“Redaction,” and there is a committee of fifty-three compilers who 
review papers. - This committee is an international one, consisting of 
forty-four Frenchmen, three Belgians, three Englishmen, one Russian, 
one Swiss, and one American. In addition to reviews of individual 
papers, some of these compilers have furnished summaries of progress 
in a subject. With the reviews of any chapter in their hands, the 
director and secretary have made a summary, exhibiting in a few pages 
the salient points of progress made during the year in the subject under 
consideration, This summary precedes the reviews in each chapter, 80 
that the reader may first quickly read the accounts of progress in the 
different subjects and then look up the more detailed reviews of any 
particular papers. Finally, there is a “Table analytique” in which 
are references to about 2500 subjects, groups, and authors; e. g- 
tropisme, Helix, Helmholtz, Altogether much good judgment has 
been exercised in the arrangement of the contents of the annual and in 
making cross references so that the work shall be most serviceable to 
the student. 
As for the reviews themselves, they are in general reviews and not 
abstracts, in which respect they quite throw in the shade the con 
tents of the usual “ Berichte.” Most of them are, of course, less thet 
a page long but important works command much more space. cme 
the review of Roux’s “ Gesammelte Abhandlungen ” occupies 13 pages? 
of Tornier’s “ Entstehung der Gelenkformen” 73 pages: of Verworn'’s 
