184 
POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
the multitudinous work and experiments of the German bee-masters. Many 
of the statements which the volume contains have been long ago shown to 
be incorrect. In no case is this more marked than in the' anatomy of the 
bee; the author’s most recent authority seeming to be Cuvier. Indeed, it 
would seem to us as though the editor’s u bar and frame hive ” was the only 
novelty in the volume, and was the sole cause why a new edition has been 
brought out. No doubt the opinions of the older anatomists and bee-culti- 
vators are of interest, but that they are now completely out of date there 
is not the least doubt in the world. For instance, it is perfectly absurd to 
make up a book by inserting the matter which has tilled various works 
during the last century or so. If we may so express ourselves, the book is 
too much of the type of u Kirby and Spence,” and has the disadvantage 
of being vastly older. We certainly do not regard it as in any shape 
or form worthy to be styled a modern work upon the subject it is supposed 
to treat. Doubtless, it contains an immense store of facts ; but then these 
are to -be found in every work of the kind published for the last fifty years, 
and, what is worse, a very large number of them are utterly unreliable. 
POPULAR PHYSIOLOGY.* 
I T is surprising, but not the less true, that, great as one would expect the 
interest to be produced by a knowledge of the human frame, and 
interesting as one would imagine the study of the human frame to be, 
nevertheless books on physiology have almost always been a failure so far 
as the general public is concerned. Great as may be their wonder when some 
simple phenomenon in the human frame is explained, and intense as may 
be their interest under peculiar circumstances in knowing even the most 
elementary part of the human structure, yet, nevertheless, when good books, 
amply illustrated, are placed within their reach by popular writers, they 
are seldom or never purchased, and they almost invariably cause a dead 
loss to either the author or the publisher. Holding these views, we cannot 
hope for a very extensive sale of the work before us, and this opinion 
becomes the stronger when we remember the exceedingly small number — 
forty-five in all — of illustrations which it contains. Of course we must not 
expect very much accuracy in the illustrations to a work which is popular 
and from the French. The woodcuts are fair, but they convey a very 
inaccurate idea of the structure for which they are intended, and we fancy 
that M. Leveille, the artist, did not engrave them in many cases from actual 
specimens, but from drawings ; in fact, the sketch of bone-structure which is 
on one of the pages, is a purely imaginary combination of parts, and indeed the 
same may be said of the “ rods of Jacob ” in the section on the eye. Still, 
on the whole, the descriptions are very good, and have been rendered into 
admirable English by the translator; so that altogether the book is an 
excellent one, especially for the artist class. We wish it success. 
* u Wonders of the Human Body. From the French of A. Le Pileur, 
Doctor of Medicine.” London : Blackie and Son, 1871. 
