NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS. 



199 



wide reading and of many interests, he made observations and col- 

 lected specimens wherever he went. The last few years of his life 

 were spent at South Godstone, Surrey, where he occupied himself in 

 farming. He was a Fellow of the Linnean, Zoological, and Eoyal 

 Geographical Societies, &c, and his principal work, ' A Year in 

 Brazil,' published in 1888, includes a scientific appendix, containing 

 extensive notes on Meteorology, Zoology (especially Entomology), 

 Botany and Geology, lists of shells, Lepidoptera and Coleoptcra, and 

 remarks on Evolution and Mimicry. Several species enumerated are 

 rarities of some scientific interest. Personally, Mr. Dent was a man 

 of extremely generous and straightforward character, and his loss is 

 much regretted by his friends and neighbours. — W. F. K. 



NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS. 



A Naturalist in Tasmania. By Geoffrey Smith, M.A. 

 Clarendon Press, Oxford. 



This book is based on a stay of six months in Tasmania 

 during the spring and summer of 1907-8, and the expedition 

 was undertaken at the suggestion of Prof. G. C. Bourne with the 

 object of studying especially the fresh-water life of that island. 

 That this small fauna is of the most interesting and important 

 character is perhaps known better to specialists than to more 

 general naturalists. The Tasmanian Mountain Shrimp (Ana- 

 spides tasmanice) finds its nearest allies in some marine shrimps 

 " which have come down to us as fairly common fossils in the 

 sand deposited round the Permian and Carboniferous seas of 

 Europe and North America," but to judge by external appear- 

 ance there is very little difference in organization between the 

 primitive forms of the Carboniferous period and the present-day 

 A. tasmanice. When Mr. Smith first saw the Mountain Shrimp 

 — to use his own words — " walking quietly about in its crystal- 

 clear habitations, as if nothing of any great consequence had 

 happened since its ancestors walked in a sea peopled with 

 strange reptiles, by a shore on which none but cold-blooded 

 creatures plashed among the rank forests of fern-like trees, 

 before ever bird flew or youngling was suckled with milk, time 



