EEVIEWS. 
73 
never lags behind the advance of the science which it represents, for hardly 
a year goes by in which some one of its volumes does not come out in a new 
edition with revisions and additions. We have been for some time looking 
forward to the appearance of the fourth edition of the volume on organic 
chemistry, and just as we went “to press” with our last number it was 
issued by Messrs. Longmans. It is unnecessary for us to. say a word as to 
the contents, for the chief features of the work are already familiar to chemi- 
cal readers. We may point out the fact, however, that the present edition 
possesses certain distinguishing peculiarities. The metric system has been 
introduced ; in the thermometric scales we find the centigrade graduation as 
well as that of Fahrenheit, and the new form of notation has been adopted. 
These are the chief points in which the fourth differs from the preceding edi- 
tion of this excellent work. In other respects, it is simply a book which, 
above all others, gives us a graphic and readable account of those manifold 
and yet complex transformations of a few elements which constitute the 
branch of study called organic chemistry. But it is not simply a book for the 
chemist ; it is a treatise which the manufacturer, the physiologist, and the 
medical man will not consult in vain. 
REPTILES AND BIRDS.* 
I F from no other reason, this book of M. Figuier’s is useful from the 
circumstance that recent attention has been directed to the close anato- 
mical relation between reptiles and birds. It is hard to conceive, at first, 
that the most sluggish — at least some of them — and the most active of ver- 
tebrates can have any kinship, and yet the teachings of comparative anatomy, 
as unfolded by the researches of Huxley and Wagner, leave us no doubt on 
the point. It is from this circumstance alone that the book before us 
deserves commendation. That it is a handsome volume, that its illustrations 
are many and good, that its statements, so far as they go, are truthful, we 
are bound to confess. Perhaps the reader will ask what more we require ? 
and to this we will reply that these qualities are not all that is wanted to make 
a book commendable. Much more is requisite. What would a museum be 
worth in which there was simply a collection ? What likewise is the value 
of a work in which facts alone are recorded ? We answer, for the purposes 
of education, nothing. Now, in this book of M. Figuier’s we note the ten- 
dency we have found in all his works, and which we have in this country been 
almost alone in condemning — the tendency to popularise unconscientiously. 
We hope he will excuse us the comparison, but in reading his multitudinous 
compilations, we feel that we are learning biology much as we should 
expect to learn history from some of those stentorian warders who daily 
take their dozen visitors through the chambers of the Tower of London. 
There is an uncomfortable “ cut and dry ” sort of feeling in reading his 
books, a sort of scissors- and-pasty feeling which we have never yet got 
* “Reptiles and Birds, a Popular Account of their various Orders.” By 
Louis Figuier. Edited by Parker Gillmore. London : Chapman and Hall, 
1870. 
