REVIEWS OF NEW PUBLICATIONS, 
103 
Anatomy. Till the time of the publication of Dr. Grant’s lectures in The Lancet s 
in 1833-4, we are not aware that any work existed in the English language 
professing to give a complete sketch of existing knowledge on Comparative 
Anatomy. Dr. Fife’s meagre compendium, and the isolated remarks of Sir 
Everard Home in. his lectures, being the only works that could be referred to by 
the student. Since then, however, Griffith’s translation of Cuvier’s Kegne 
Animal has been finished, and Dr. Grant has published, or rather is publishing, 
Outlines of Comparative Anatomy ; and we have now before us the first two 
parts of Prof. Jones’s Outlines of the Animal Kingdom. We were pleased at 
the announcement of this publication ; for although the works above mentioned 
contain an immense mass of information on the subjects of which they treat, the 
former is too expensive for general diffusion, and the latter is written in too 
technical a style for the bulk of students of Natural History. We trust neither 
of these will be objections to Mr. Jones’s book. 
Mr. Jones commences his volume with some remarks on classification, giving 
a short history of the subject, and the views of the principal systematists up to 
the present day. In this slight sketch he alludes to his own countryman, John 
Hunter, whose labours as a comparative-anatomist are unequalled, and whose 
merits, from peculiar circumstances, have been too little known, even among his 
own countrymen. 
Aristotle and Linnaeus founded their classifications upon the circulatory 
system. Hunter gave sketches of arrangements founded upon other systems 
than that of the circulatory, and in those arrangements which he founded upon 
his researches in the nervous system he closely approached the principles of 
the most approved classification of the present day. The importance of making 
the nervous system the basis of all classification of the animal kingdom, not only 
in its larger divisions, but in its minor sub-divisions, is daily becoming more 
recognised by naturalists; and we fully agree with the author’s observations 
(p. 5) on this point. The aim of classification should undoubtedly be to bring 
together those objects in Nature which most nearly resemble each other; and 
these resemblances should not be founded on adventitious and changeful proper¬ 
ties, but on those that are the most important. Observing, then, that the nervous 
system is the seat of those peculiar properties which distinguish animals from 
organic beings, we might infer, as an animal could not maintain its peculiarity 
without this system, that here we should find the surest basis for a classification 
of the animal kingdom. The following is a sketch of the arrangement adopted 
by Mr. Jones :— 
Division I., Acrita (MacLeay), Cryptoneura (Rudolphi), Protozoa , Oozoa . 
1. Sponges 3. Polygastric Animalcules. 
2. Polyps. 4. Acalephse. 
5. Parenchymatous Entozoa, or Sterelmintha. % £ i 
VOL. IV.—NO. XXVII. Z 
