140 The American Naturalist. [ February, 
RECENT LITERATURE. 
Two Text-Books of Human Embryology.—Only a few 
years ago the physician who wished to know anything about the 
development of the human body found his whole supply of infor- 
mation in one or two chapters of his physiological text-book. In 
some respects the statements to be found there were reliable, but, at 
least in most American physiologies, they were strange misconceptions, 
as they could scarcely help being, for they were abstracts, at sixth or 
seventh hand of the wonderful researches of Bischoff, of Rathke and 
of von Baer, with never a bit of autoptic knowledge on the part of 
the compiler. i 
In the last two decades our knowledge of the embryology of man 
and of the other mammals has been greatly increased, so that the 
summary given by Balfour scarcely ten years ago is in many respects 
behind the times. So a new résumé in English is very acceptable. 
“Tt never rains but it pours.” Thesame week brings to our table two 
works with essentially the same scope—that is the embryology of man 
and the mammals, with side lights on the lower vertebrates—but of | 
greatly different treatment. 
The first to be mentioned, Minot’s Human Embryology, 18 A 
large octavo volume, especially designed for the physician. That 
is, it seems admirably adapted to lead the medical student or prac 
titioner into a clearer knowledge of the history of the human body, 
a knowledge of which the average physician has but the veriest 
smattering. Minot gives first an introduction in which he describes 
the uterus and outlines the stages of human development. Then the 
main portion of the book is divided into five parts. In the first W° 
Ot eee 
have an account of the history of the genital products and the theory 
of sex, together with a brief discussion of heredity. In Part Two the 
origin and meaning of the germ layers are discussed. This portion 
will prove more or less familiar to our readers, as several of its chap- 
ters have already been given in our pages. In the Third Part the 
chapters treat of the building up of the embryo, those of the Fourth E 
the fætal appendages, while the Fifth Part takes up the fotus. AS 
an appendix given is an exceedingly condensed list of references t0 
the authorities quoted in the text. Such a table of contents as that = 
‘Human Embryology by Charles Sedgwick Minot. N. Y., William Wood : 
& Co., 1892, pp. xxiii + 815. 
