EEVIEWS. 
287 
that of the south-eastern islands, he, we think, satishictorily establishes the 
proposition that the Austro-Malayan division belongs to the now diminished 
but originally vast continent of Polynesia, while the Indo-Malayan section 
is a detached portion of the continent of Asia. The same line of demarca- 
tion does not, Mr. Wallace admits, apply to the lower animals and man, but 
the human line, so to speak, so closely corresponds to that for the animals, 
that the division, says the author, is on the whole almost as well-defined 
and strongly contrasted as in the corresponding Zoological division of the 
Archipelago into the Indo-Malayan and Austro-Mala^^an region.” 
The appendix to Mr. Wallace’s work contains a short but useful account 
of the measurements of the Malayan cranium, and a still more useful list 
of a hundred and seventeen words as they are found in thirty- three different 
languages of the Malay Archipelago. In conclusion, we would say of this 
work, that it is a book worthy to be placed between Lyell’s Principles and 
Darwin’s Origin of Species, for it is an application of the principles laid 
down in these two standards of English biological philosophy. 
THE BRITISH ZOOPHYTES.* 
O F the numerous general treatises on natural history subjects which have 
of late years issued from the press, this one of the Rev. Thomas 
Hincks is unquestionably the most comprehensive and interesting as it is 
certain to be the most popular. And when we use the term popular, we 
mean that the work is one which everyone connected with natural history 
pursuits must possess — the student must have the book for the purposes of 
reference, and the amateur will make it his companion to the sea-shore. 
It is a singular fact, but it unquestionably is a fact, that there is hardly a 
group in the whole animal kingdom so thoroughly well understood as that 
of the Hydroid Zoophytes, and yet, till a few years ago, when Professors 
Huxley and Allman and Mr. Hincks devoted themselves to its investigation, 
it was a class concerning which our knowledge was represented by ‘^a rude 
and undigested mass ” of statements, which were certainly not in half the 
cases facts. Now, the morphology of this body of Coelenterates is so well 
known that the class may almost be said to be best understood in the whole 
animal kingdom. 
In two handsome volumes, Mr. Hincks has given us a general introduction 
to the biology of the Hydrozoa, a minute account of all the British species, 
and a series of illustrations covering about seventy 8vo. plates, and em- 
bracing about 300 carefully drawn figures. Altogether the treatise is an 
exhaustive one ; it embraces everything that is known as to the general 
natural history of the class, and it contains elaborate descriptions of the 
zoological characters, distribution, habits, and habitat, of every known British 
species of Hydroid zoophyte. The opening chapter on the general natural 
history gives an excellent sketch of the peculiar relationship which exists 
between the polyp-stalk and medusid or gonozoid, and the development of 
* ‘‘A History of the British Zoophytes.” By Thomas Hincks, B.A. 
2 vols. London : Van Voorst, 1869. 
YOL. YIII. — KO. XXXII. U 
