REVIEWS. 
Recherches Sur les Poissons Fossiles. Par Louis Agassiz. Neuchatel 
(Suisse). Quarto. 
Professor Agassiz, in this elegant and most instructive Monograph on 
Ichthyolites, proposes, after an introduction on the study of fishes, to “ exhibit a 
view of the Comparative Anatomy of the organic systems, which may facilitate 
the determination of the fossil species ; a new classification of Fishes, shewing the 
relations which they have with the series of (geological) formations; the exposi¬ 
tion of the laws of their succession and development during all the revolutions of 
the terrestrial globe, accompanied by general geological considerations; and, 
finally, the description of five hundred species no longer existing (except in a 
fossil state), and of which the characters have been determined from the relics 
contained In the earth’s strata.” 
This is a truly comprehensive plan,—the emanation of an active, enterprizing, 
and profoundly philosophic spirit. As far as we can judge from an examination 
of the First Number (Premiere Livraison) now before us, it has verily been 
worked out with a master’s hand. A production more honourable to the talents 
and industry of its author, or more useful and interesting to the Ichthyologist, the 
Comparative Anatomist, and, especially, to the student of Geology, we cannot 
well conceive. 
Of the divers modes in which a book may be reviewed, the Analytical is pecu¬ 
liarly, and almost exclusively, applicable to those scientific productions which have 
facts, rather than hypotheses, for their foundation. Whenever such productions 
are, either from the expensive form, or from the language, in which they have 
been published, inaccessible or unavailable to the great mass of readers whom 
they are calculated to interest and inform, the motives for the analytical method 
are greatly and obviously strengthened. Such are precisely the conditions of the 
valuable Researches of Professor Agassiz. The work is, moreover, written in a style 
which we, who have long been familiar with the scientific language of the French, 
have at times found it no easy matter to comprehend, or at least render intelligible 
to the English reader. Consequently, it will afford an admirable subject for a 
purely analytical sketch, and for the exhibition of our skill and patience,—if 
such we possess,—in the difficult but useful process of literary evisceration. 
The various new branches or departments of human acquirement demand, as 
they successively arise, new terms for their apt and precise designation. The in¬ 
fluence of a philosophical language on the character and progress of the Sciences 
is far greater than a superficial view of the subject would lead us to believe. The 
