REVIEWS AND EXCHANGES 249 
anatomical detail, whilst frequent quotations from travellers and trustworthy out- 
door naturalists fill his pages with interest. Who, for instance, can fail to realise 
better the work of the scavengers of nature when he reads of a dead duck falling 
into the water and being devoured in five minutes, with the exception of skin, 
feathers, and — we presume — bones, by the water-beetles ( Dytiscus )? So too may 
ROBBER CRAB OX PALM-BRANCH. 
(From “Natural History of the Lower Animals,” by permission of the Religious 
Tract Society.) 
the possibilities of evolution be the better realised when, reading of Semper’s 
discovery that certain crabs have their gill-cavities modified into lungs, we see 
this picture of a robber-crab on a palm-branch. We have seen few books this 
autumn that would, at the price, make so pleasing a Christmas gift to boy or girl, 
though in deference to what we have learnt is the taste of the young naturalist, 
Mr. Scherren might in his next edition, give us Latin as well as English names. 
Animal Studies. By David Starr Jordan, Vernon Lyman Kellogg, and Harold 
Heath. Twentieth Century Text-books. Appleton and Co. Price 5s. net. 
This, at a less price than either, and issued by a different publishing house, is 
a combination of the salient features of Animal Life and Animal Forms , volumes 
by the same authors which we have noticed on previous occasions. It is thus a 
compact treatment of zoology, both ecological and morphological, in a single 
volume, and occupies, as a high-school text-book, a position previously unfilled. 
Room has been found for new chapters on the principles of classification, the uses 
of animals and extinct forms. These are as explicit, as complete, and as interest- 
ing as are the chapters taken from the previous volumes, though it is hardly 
possible to dismiss some points of zoological nomenclature as simply as is here 
attempted. “The authority usually written after the name of an animal is that 
of the one who gave it its specific name,” say the authors, “thus, Sciurus 
hudsonicus Erxleben, which means that Erxleben first called it hudsonicus . ” 
Strictly speaking, the authority is that for the collocation of the two names, 
which, by the way, is a “binominal,” not as the authors style it, a “binomial ” 
system. So too in writing of synonyms, the authors say : “When several names 
are given to the same animal they are called synonyms. The earliest of these 
names is the right name. All the rest are wrong.” This would set us delving 
into the mustiest of antiquarianism with a vengeance. But perhaps the necessarily 
terse didacticism of a school book may excuse such slight over statements. 
Morphology of Spermatophytes. By John M. Coulter and Charles J. Chamberlain. 
Appleton and Co., 1903. 
Morphology of Angiosperms ( Morphology of Spermatophytes ), Part II. Some 
authors and publishers. Price IOs. 6d., net. 
Messrs. Coulter and Chamberlain, in their endeavour to present the latest 
results of morphological research — or their publishers — have produced a misleading 
