BOOKS ON NATURAL HISTORY. 
213 
one, and the etheric communications made to the one individual would be the 
same to the other ; any communication made from the world by the ether would 
be received by the other ; for the time being the two would be so far mentally 
joined into one person ” (p. 40). 
The name of Professor Milnes Marshall, whose tragic death on Scawfell is 
yet recent, is a sufficient guarantee that whatever bears his name is quite up -to 
the level of modern scientific research. In the papers before us he devotes 
himself principally to a study of the past life of animals, rather than the present, 
tracing in considerable detail what he supposes to have been their ancestry. It 
is, however, surely neither just nor humorous, and perhaps unwise, to give such 
an extravagant account as the following, of the methods of the human genealogist : 
“ Would we learn these facts [concerning our own pedigree], we know that 
there are those whose profession it is to supplement our deficiencies of memory 
or of information on these points, and who are prepared, for a sum of half-a-crown, 
to provide the enquirer with a duly attested pedigree dating from the time of 
the Conquest. For a guinea a Roman Emperor can be obtained ; while the 
avaricious in such matters, who are prepared to spend a five-pound note, may 
satisfy themselves, and for all we know, truthfully, of their descent from a 
Pharaoh of the nineteenth dynasty ” (p. 193). It is a grievous defect in a book 
of this nature that it should be without an index. 
In Ponds and Rock Pooh Mr. Scherren has a most enticing subject, which 
of necessity leads him and his readers into the open air, under which alone such 
things are found, He, however, in uniformity with modern fashion, casts over 
his researches in the woodlands or on the shore an air of the study which for 
many must rob them of half their charm. We wish he could have seen his 
way to tell us more of the creatures concerning which he knows so much — that 
would present them to us as living and acting beings, rather than as learned 
specimens. The following typical passage, though unquestionably instructive, 
can scarcely be called attractive to the general reader. 
“There will probably be dotted here and there on the film-covered weed, a 
Vorticella-like animalcule with a body inch long, fixed in a rigid stalk or 
column, about a quarter the length of the body. This will be one of the species 
of Rhabdostyla — probably R. ovum ; and a knowledge of this, as well as of the 
preceding genus is necessary before we can understand how the compound forms. 
Carchesium, and Zodthamnium, Epistylis and Opercularia, may have developed” 
(p. 59). To the practical microscopist, however, for whom the book seems to be 
intended, it should be of great use. 
Despite his remarks on the term, the author of Industries of Animals treats 
his readers to what is much more like the old “ Natural History ” than any of the 
books we have considered, recounting a number of instances in which various 
creatures perform operations analogous to those of man, in hunting, fighting, 
building, provision storing, slave making, and the like. Unfortunately, as we 
must think, he collects his facts with a purpose, which is to show that the mental 
faculties of the lower animals are like in nature to our own, which seems to make 
him ready to accept stories for the truth of which we should wish to have very 
explicit evidence. This is the more unfortunate, as his whole book has the 
appearance of being composed more from the materials obtained by reading than 
from actual observation. He tells us, for example, of the wonderful fencing 
skill exhibited by the African Secretary bird in his combats with poisonous ser- 
pents, but says nothing of the equally remarkable feats of our own titmice and 
flycatchers in dealing with bees and wasps. More to his purpose than some of the 
stories he tells would seem to be the instinct which leads a thrush to smash a snail- 
shell on a stone, or crows on the coast to drop shell-fish on the rocks, taking 
them up higher if the first attempt is unsuccessful, or that which teaches a water- 
hen to build its nest higher before a flood. On the other hand, we should like a 
more precise authority than “it is said ” for the strange things he tells us of the 
methods by which the fox circumvents the hedge-hog, or for such an account as 
the following: — “ A snake is very embarrassed when he has swallowed an entire 
egg with the shell ; he cannot digest it in that condition, and the muscles of his 
stomach are not strong enough to break it. The snake often finds himself in 
this condition, and is then accustomed either to strike his body against hard 
