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1884.] Recent Literature. 49 
vivid description and good generalizing powers. It is, moreover, 
a successful application of the principle of evolution, the theory 
forming the warp and woof of the work, and thus according with 
nature, while a wholesome and reverent tone pervades the pages. 
It is just the book to use in schools as a reader, or for collateral 
reading by classes in zoology. 
The book is a continuation of Miss Buckley's earlier little vol- 
ume entitled “ Life and her Children,” to which we shall hereafter 
draw attention. Taking up the thread dropped at the close of the 
book just named, the authoress shows that while the world before 
the advent of fishes and other back-boned animals was teeming 
with life, worms, mollusks, crustaceans, insects, etc., yet the world. 
could not make the fullest use of them, and therefore life devised 
a plan of structure where her forms should reach their highest 
€xpression, and which should take the lead all over the earth, 
dominating the regions of the air, the earth, as well as the water. 
Beginning with the lancelet, and considering the sea-squirts or 
ascidians, two types lying on the threshhold of “ back-bone life,” 
she then describes the lamprey, then the old-fashioned “ ganoid” 
fishes, and shows how they led the way to the incoming of the 
VOL, XVIIT.—No. 1, 4 
