50 | SCIENCE. 
which they call forth in his class. The figures 
of the book are large and clear: in one or two 
of the plates so much has been attempted that 
they appear, at first sight, confused; but this 
is a slight blemish in a book worthy, in other 
respects, of all commendation. The book is 
well fitted, in the language of the author in his 
preface, to ‘‘ prepare the student for the work 
of subsequent daily life by training the observ- 
ing and reasoning faculties.’ 
PACKARD’S BRIEFER ZOOLOGY. 
Zovlogy. By A. S. Packarp, jun. New York, 
Holt, 1883. 5+334 p., illustr. 16°. 
Tue Zodlogy of the same series as the pre- 
ceding is also an abridgment of and intro- 
ductory to the larger text-book by the same 
author. Of the 315 pages of the text, only 
130 are devoted to invertebrates: of the 180 
pages devoted to vertebrates, many are occu- 
pied by large and very ornamental but hardly 
useful pictures. Of about 3800 cuts, 90 are 
devoted to birds and mammals, and 40 to fish: 
of these a few are anatomical, the rest illus- 
trations. The removal of many of these cuts 
would leave room for more print, without affect- 
ing the attractiveness of the book. The book 
is intended for young pupils, and yields to the 
common prejudice that birds and mammals are 
most interesting to this class. Yet precisely 
these animals come least within their reach, 
and their study of birds especially involves 
far more memorizing than observation on the 
part of most young pupils. ‘These same pu- 
pils, in one afternoon excursion, could collect 
scores of insects, in which Professor Packard, 
as his other books show, could easily interest 
them. But to insects proper only 16 pages 
are devoted. Here a few pages of tables for 
determining the families, at least with one or 
two of the most common and familiar species 
as examples under each, would encourage the 
young student to new search and observa- 
tion. 
Of most of the lower types and classes the 
young student sees generally only one or two 
specimens, if any. Here clear, sharp, and exact 
definitions are needed to enable him to distin- 
euish between essential and non-essential char- 
acters. ‘These we miss; and here, as under 
certain types in the larger text-book, the stu- 
dent becomes bewildered in the attempt to 
burden his memory with a mass of, to him, 
equally. important data. This is especially 
noticeable in the treatment of the difficult type 
of the Coelenterata, but more or less marked 
elsewhere. The points of affinity and difference 
between the succeeding types and the struc- 
tural characteristics -which form the basis of — 
classification in the subdivision of those types 
are not clearly or sharply stated. ‘There are 
no grand outlines to direct the student’s atten- 
tion. Ina text-book intended exclusively for 
use in the laboratory, it is perhaps admissible | 
that typical and specific characteristics should 
appear side by side, and with equal emphasis ; 
in a text-book designed largely for use in the 
classroom as well, it is a great defect. These 
outlines are little, if any, clearer in the abridg- 
ment than in the larger book. The anatomical 
suts are generally good, but they are most of 
them small, much smaller than those of the elk 
or moose; and in some of them so much has 
been attempted that the organs are sometimes 
difficult to trace. Larger and more schematic 
drawings would have been more useful. Bar- 
ring certain of these defects, Professor Pack- 
ard’s larger work is the best text-book which 
we have for use in our higher schools and col- 
leges, but it certainly has not been improved 
by abridgment. 
MARIE’S HISTORY OF THE SCIENCES. 
Histoire des sciences mathématiques et physiques. Par 
M. Maximinien Marie. Tomel. De Thalés 
d PRoehan Paris, Gauthier- Villars, 1883. 286 
p- - 
Tuts volume is devoted to the mathematics 
of the Greeks, and covers nearly a thousand 
years (640 B.C. to 825 A.D.). 
The author divides this time into three peri- 
ods, roughly distinguished by the nature of the 
work done in geometry; the first period (640 
B.C. to 310 B.C.) being that in which no at- 
tempt was made to apply arithmetic to geome- 
try, but exclusive attention was given to dealing 
with and comparing concrete magnitudes with- 
out reference to their numerical measures. 
During the second period (310 B.C. to 150 
B.C.), numerical measures of complex magni- 
tudes began to be investigated, — for example, 
Archimedes obtained a first approximation for 
the ratio of the circumference of the circle to 
its diameter ; but the numerical work was merely 
incidental, and was usually suggested by some 
problem connected with astronomy: while, in 
the third period (150 B.C. to 325 A.D.), rea- 
soning on concrete magnitudes began to be 
largely replaced by reasoning on their measures, 
and geometry developed mainly in the direction 
of trigonometry. 
At the beginning of the history of each of 
these periods is an introductory chapter con- 
[Vou. IIL, No. 4% 
