368 
Notices of Books. IMay, 
lead with a solution of bichromate of potash.” The colour we 
have met with under this name is a compound of stannic acid 
and chrome, much more stable than any lead chromate, and 
approaching a madder-lake in its shade. Trade names, how- 
ever, are used with such latitude that we should hesitate to pro- 
nounce the passage quoted to be erroneous. 
A peculiarity of this book, if we consider the especial purpose 
for which it is written, is the retention of the “ old ” chemical 
nomenclature, for the very satisfactory reason that it is more 
generally intelligible. We should have thought, however, that 
South Kensington would have been prepared to fulminate the 
greater excommunication against the luckless wight who in these 
days should speak of carbonic acid as a constituent of the atmo- 
sphere. 
We should consider the work an admirable manual of reference 
for builders, but the demands made upon the verbal memory of 
the unfortunates who have to be examined in it are simply fear- 
ful to contemplate. 
An Introduction to the Systetnatic Zoology and Morphology of 
Vertebrate Animals. By A. Macalister, M.D. Dublin : 
Hodges, Foster, and Figgis. London : Longmans and Co. 
Borrowing Earl Beaconsfield’s critique on the poetry of Mr. R. 
Browning, we might couple with our appreciation of the merits 
of this work the wish that some good soul would translate it into 
English. Let us suppose it placed in the hands of a man well 
versed in the science of zoology as taught in the middle of the 
present century, but who had spent the last twenty years on 
some desert island. He would naturally expeCt to find that 
many new discoveries had been made, and that many notions 
accepted in his day had been given up. But to what extent such 
changes in the matter had taken place he would be unable to 
detedt, on account of the still greater and more obtrusive revolu- 
tion in the manner. He would find himself hopelessly lost in a 
fire-new terminology. Biology has not, indeed, like chemistry, 
given names of ten and twelve syllables in length to the indivi- 
duals she describes. No one, fortunately, has yet conceived the 
idea of making the generic and specific names of an animal or 
plant embody its supposed line of descent. All this will come 
by-and-bye unless a vigorous stand be made. But for groups 
and classes of higher rank than genera, as well as for the parts 
of animals and for their structural attributes, the names selected 
are needlessly long and gratuitously un-English. We always 
presume that in every branch of natural science the great objeCt 
of the teacher should be to concentrate the attention of the 
