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THE AMERICAN NATURALIST [Vol. XLII 



royalty. It is still abundant even after Hawaiian royalty has 

 passed away." Or — "The coral reefs of the tropics are the 

 centers of fish-life, the cities in fish economy. The fresh waters, 

 the arctic waters, the deep sea and the open sea represent forms 

 of ichthyic back-woods, where change goes on more slowly." 

 Rarely there is a defective or ambiguous sentence, such as — 

 " Turner gives an account of a frozen individual swallowed by a 

 dog which escaped in safety after being thawed out by the heat 

 of the dog's stomach," but the book, as would be expected, is 

 exceptionally well written. It is also well illustrated, and the 

 figures (except Fig. 268) are carefully placed to accompany the 

 text. They include a considerable number of photographs of liv- 

 ing fishes, and eighteen colored plates, chiefly of fishes from the 

 coral reefs of Samoa. The volume is attractively printed, except 

 that Chapter XI, The Collection of Fishes, begins with a 

 page on The Classification of Fishes (p. 157) ; whether the 

 mistake is in omitting the rest of the chapter on classification or 

 in printing its first page is not apparent. 



An illustrated description of the changes in the external form 

 of fish eggs during their development, further accounts of nest- 

 building, and the quotation of Brooks' vivid descriptions of the 

 salmon or shad, might perhaps have added to the popular inter- 

 est in the book. It is, however, sufficiently large, and is full of 

 authoritative information. It accomplishes all that President 

 Jordan planned, and is a comprehensive introduction to a scien- 

 tific knowledge of fish. 



Frederic T. Lewis. 



