i8So.] A nalyses of Books. 59 1 
when the sufferer arrives on land, but may remain for years. 
Even death is not entirely out of the question. The matter 
being so much more serious than it is vulgarly supposed to.be, 
it is fortunate that a trustworthy remedy exists. Sodium bromide, 
or, in default, the corresponding potassium, ammonium, or cal- 
cium salts, given three times a day in large doses, — say thirty, 
sixty, or even ninety grains, — rarely fails to prevent the attack. 
Dr. F. D. Lente first proposed the use of this salt some three or 
four days before starting on a voyage, keeping it up until there 
is reason to believe that all danger is over. Failure is generally 
the result of too small doses, or of waiting till sea-sickness 
actually appears before the remedy is given. If vomiting has 
actually set in, the bromides, and indeed all medicines adminis- 
tered by the mouth, are useless, for the very sufficient reason 
that they are not retained in the stomach long enough for 
absorption. In such cases the author recommends the hypo- 
dermic injection of atropia — an operation which must, of course, 
be entrusted only to professional hands. 
We hope that Dr. Beard’s work will be widely circulated 
among the medical profession, as it will doubtless prove the 
means of dispensing with much needless misery. 
The First Types and the Serial Succession of Insects in the 
Palceozoic Epoch. 
The well-known American naturalist, Mr. S. H. Scudder, has 
published, in the “ Archives des Sciences Physiques et Natu- 
relles ” a summary of the occurrence of insedts in the earlier 
geological periods. He concludes that, with the exception of 
certain wings of Hexapods, found in the Devonian strata, all the 
three groups of insedts— the Hexapods, the Arachnides, and the 
Myriapods— make their appearance simultaneously in the Car- 
boniferous system. The Hexapods, or true insedts, may be 
divided into two classes— the higher (Metabola) comprising the 
Hymenoptera, Lepidoptera, and Diptera ; and the lower (Hetero- 
metabola) including the Coleoptera, Hemiptera, Orthoptera, and 
N All 0 the ^sedts of the Devonian and the Carboniferous forma- 
tions are Hetero-metabola, the Metabola making their first 
appearance in the Jurassic period. In the Paleozoic ages there 
occur numerous synthetic or generalised types, which combine 
the characters either of all the Hetero-metabola, or of the 
Orthoptera and Neuroptera, or of the true Neuroptera and the 
Pseudo-Neuroptera. The Devonian insedts belong to types re- 
lated to the two lower orders only, or they are Pseudo-Neuroptera 
with a lower organisation, which unquestionably inhabited the 
VOL. II. (THIRD SERIES). 2 S 
