No. 411.] REVIEWS OF RECENT LITERATURE. 229 
near the ends of the row. The rows were so placed on the surface 
of the body as to form bands transverse to the animal’s chief axis. 
In any given band the rows constituting it alternate with those of 
the two adjacent bands. The rows of quills break the integu- 
ment up into plate-like areas, which the author interprets, in accord- 
ance with the conclusions of Weber and of others, as the remains of 
scutes with which the ancestors of mammals are supposed to have 
been covered. Judging from the condition of the integument in 
the porcupine, these scutes were large and well developed dorsally 
and small and poorly formed ventrally. In the porcupine the woolly 
hair makes its appearance much later than the quills, and may be 
formed on the scute areas. Phylogenetically the quills represent 
the primitive hairs, and these are distributed in conformity to the 
primitive scute covering. The woolly hairs, on the other hand, 
are a much later acquisition, and are distributed without respect to 
the places once occupied by scutes. As the skin of the porcupine 
contains no sweat glands, the animal will probably be found to have 
a summer and a winter pelage as an adaptation to temperature 
changes. P. 
Human Physiology. — The last addition to the series of Temple 
Primers is entitled Zhe Human Frame and the Laws of Health, and 
is a translation by F. W. Keeble from the German of Rebmann and 
Seiler. The first ninety-five pages are devoted to the more salient 
facts of human anatomy and physiology, and the remaining fifty to 
hygiene. The presentation is remarkable for its clearness and its 
general freedom from misstatements such as so frequently mar texts 
intended to be popular. Here and there slight slips are to be 
noticed: thus, on page 24 we are told that without the influence 
of the nerve the muscle cannot contract, and on page 30, in the 
description of the brain, we are informed that the third ventricle 
gives off three clefts, lateral ventricles, on either side. Further, on 
page 139, the distinction between smell and taste is inadequately 
made out, and the subject is left in the confused state in which it 
exists in the popular mind. Occasionally inapt expressions are met 
with, as when (p. 31) the cerebral hemispheres are said to be marked 
out into two unegual halves and (p. 99) ozone is described as a con- 
densed form of oxygen. Even such small defects as these, however, 
l Rebmann and Seiler. Zhe Human Frame and the Laws of Health. Trans- 
lated from the German by F. W. Keeble. 148 pp. The Temple Primers. 
London, Dent & Co. 
