50 THE AMERICAN NATURALIST.  [Vor. XXXIX. 
references and list of books, a feature which alone makes the volume 
of great importance to the teacher. 
One feature in the present situation of biological teaching is 
apparently not dwelt upon and that is the importance of high grade 
teachers for such work. Doubtless this is taken for granted, but 
it is certainly too true that the subjects included under biology are 
often forced as side work upon uninterested teachers with the result 
that the poor outcome is too frequently attributed to the subject 
rather than to the conditions under which it is taught. Asa whole 
the volume is an unusually sound body of suggestion and advise 
which no teacher of school biology can afford to be without. 
& P. 

ZOÖLOGY. 
A New Textbook of Zoógeography.! — Professor Arnold Jacobi 
of the Forestry Academy at Tharandt, Saxony, has lately published 
a small manual. It is with much pleasure and satisfaction that we 
have read this little work, since it is the first general treatise of the 
subject which pays due attention to the modern improved ideas with 
regard to zoögeographical methods. 
While all previous textbooks on this subject generally fall more or 
less in line with Wallace’s method, giving chiefly an account of the 
present conditions of animal distribution upon the earth’s surface, 
and being satisfied with the creation of a “scheme” of animal dis- 
tribution, Jacobi makes it the fundamental idea of his book, that the 
creation of * schemes of distribution " is not the final goal of zoó- 
geographical research, but only a means to facilitate it. He adopts 
the view that no scheme whatever is able to explain all cases, that it 
is possible to create different schemes for differerit groups of animals, 
and that even then there are exceptional cases, which need further 
research. That these exceptional cases very often find their explana- 
tion in the geological history of the particular group to which they 
belong, is also maintained by him, and he most emphatically declares 
this latter study the most important branch of this science. Thus he 
fully accepts the general principles of zoógeography as set forth 
repeatedly by Ortmann. 
The limited space alloted for the work made it impossible for the 
! Jacobi, A. Tiergeographie (Sammlung Goeschen). Leipzig, 1904. 12°. 
152 pp., 2 maps. 
