1895.] Recent Literature. 1075 
of the Royal Agricultural High School of Berlin. The present volume 
deals solely with the those “diseases” which are due to inorganic 
agencies, those due to the attacks of parasitic animals and plants being 
deferred to the second volume. Thus we have nearly one-half of the 
book devoted to wounds, somewhat less than a third to atmospheric 
influences, about a sixth to the influence of the soil, while in remaining 
pages various other agents are discussed. A few woodcuts help to 
illustrate the text. An English work of this kind would be useful.— 
CHARLES E. Bessey. 
Wilson’s Atlas of Karyokinesis.‘—It is the object to this altas 
to place before students and teachers of biology a practically continuous 
series of figures photographed directly from nature, to illustrate the 
the principal phenomena in the fertilization and early development of 
the animal egg. The new science of cytology has in the course of the 
past two decades brought forward discoveries relating to the fertiliza- 
tion of the egg and the closely-related subject of cell-division (karyo- 
kinesis) that have called forth on the part of Weismann and others 
some of the most important and suggestive discussions of the post- 
Darwinian biology. These discoveries must in some measure be dealt 
with by every modern text-book of morphology or physiology, yet they 
belong to a region of observation inaccessible to the general reader or 
student, since it can only be approached by means of a refined histo- 
logical technique applied to special objects not ordinarily available for 
practical study or demonstration. A knowledge of the subject must 
therefore, in most cases, be acquired from text-books in which drawings 
are made to take the place of the real object. But no drawing, how- 
ever excellent, can convey an accurate mental picture of the real 
object. It is extremely difficult for even the most skilful draughtsman 
to represent in a drawing the exact appearance of protoplasm and the 
delicate and complicated apparatus of the cell. It is impossible ade- 
quately to reproduce the drawing in a black-and-white text-book figure. 
Every such figure must necessarily be in some measure schematic and 
embodies a considerable subjective element of interpretation. 
The photograph, whatever be its shortcomings (and no photograph 
can do full justice to nature), at least gives an absolutely faithful repre- 
sentation of what appears under the microscope ; it contains no subjec- 
tive element save that involved in the focussing of the instrument, and 
hence conveys a true mental picture. The present work, therefore, 
t An atlas of the Fertilization and Karyokinesis of the ovum. By Edmund 
B. Wilson, Ph. D., Professor of Invertebrate Zoology in Columbia College, New 
York. Columbia University Press McMillan & Co., 1895. 
