492 
Notices of Books. 
[July, 
National Park; on the conditions of preservation of invertebrate 
fossils; and a supplement to the bibliography of North American 
invertebrate palaeontology. 
The Journal of the Cincinnati Society of Natural History. 
January, 1879, Vol. i., No. 4. 
In this number we have a paper by Mr. V. T. Chambers on the 
tongue of certain Hymenoptera. The tube in this organ is in 
the hive-bee i-500th of an inch in diameter, but in some of the 
Andrenidae only half that width and closed at the apex. It is 
curious that though Fritz Muller and Wolff, as well as the 
author, have demonstrated the tubular character of a bee’s 
tongue, it should be described as solid in the latest edition of the 
“ Encyclopaedia Britannica.” 
The most important article, however, is a very elaborate list of 
the birds occurring in the Cincinnati district. We shall not be 
surprised if, in spite of the “ British ” mania prevalent among 
ornithologists, entomologists, and botanists in this .country, — a 
whim which leads to little save the extirpation of our rarer 
forms, the range of each native species will be mapped out 
accurately in America sooner than in these islands. 
We learn, with little surprise, that the introduction of the 
European sparrow into the United States is now looked upon by 
competent authorities as a deplorable mistake. We hope that 
other parts of the world, not yet suffering from the presence of 
this “ winged rat,” will take warning from the experience of our 
American friends. Acclimatisation is not a matter to be rashly 
undertaken. 
Euclid and his Modern Rivals. By Charles L. Dodgson, M.A., 
Senior Student and Mathematical Lecfturer of Christ Church, 
Oxford. London : Macmillan. 1879. 
Mr. Dodgson’s drama, or rather dialogue, opens with a soliloquy 
from “ Minos ” an examiner tortured by having to look over 
papers in Geometry, containing a mixture of the old and new 
systems. Minos, after some conversation with “ Rhadamanthus” 
another equally unhappy examiner, falls asleep, and to him 
appears the shade of Euclid ready to do battle for his Manual. 
A discussion follows, in which the reasons for retaining Euclid’s 
Manual are treated, but it is noticeable that those for rejecting 
it are Qnly just mentioned ; and even that is denied to many. 
