648 The American Naturalist. [July, 
father Adam was posing as a systematist and was giving the animals 
their names. So the American student has had to depend on Euro- 
an works, Sedgwick’s translation of Claus, notwithstanding its 
outrageously high price and its short comings in treating of the 
vertebrates has been used extensively. With Dr. MeMurrich’s Inver- 
tebrate Morphology’ the demand is partially met—partially since the 
work deals only with the Invertebrates. Now the American teacher 
can refer his students toa brief and yet modern account of those 
animals fortunate enough to lack back bones, with the assurance that 
they will find, clearly expressed, the essential facts of structure and 
development. In his general treatment Dr. McMurrich follows the 
time honored precedent, first dealing with protoplasm and the cell, 
next with the Protozoa and the passing to the Metazoa and their 
various subdivisions. In these the sponges are retained under the 
Cceelenterata (spelled Coelentera) while, rightly we think,the Ctenophores 
are regarded as a distinct branch. A bit of conservatism retains the 
Nemertines in the flat worms, and the close association of the Sipunc- 
culids and Gephyrea. Like von Kennel, one author disregards the 
Arthropods, presenting instead three “types” Crustacea, Arachnida, 
and Tracheata, and (pace Lankester) treating the Xiphosures as an ap- 
pendix to the Crustacea. 
In his general treatment the author exhibits a familiarity with recent 
literature and discusses at some length such morphological questions 
as the origin of metamerism, the iner-relationship of arthropods, affin- 
ities of the Mollusca, etc. The illustrations are largely process cuts 
‘and while they have, in most instances, a freshness which is pleasing 
there is not infrequently an exasperating inaccuracy or vagueness in 
many of the diagrams and copies. Thus the student puzzling over 
the oviduct of the barnacle will have no assistance as to its termina- 
tion from fig. 181, while one looking for the number of cardiac ostia in 
Limulus will be misled by fig. 196. But the most serious errror which 
we have noticed relates to Peripatus. In fig. 220, which is copied 
from Sedgwick, the term ccelom is extended to all the cavities of the 
body which Sedgwick shows are pseudocceliac, and the peculiar feature 
that the true ccelom is restricted to the gonads, the sac at the inner ends 
of the nephridia, and the nephridia and genital ducts is no where 
noticed in the text. The typography and press-work of the volume are 
good and we are glad to see that the publishers have dropped the fat 
. 1 A text-book of Invertebrate Morphology T James Playfair McMurrich: New 
York. Henry Holt & Co., 1894 80 pp. vii+660 
