Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 30.djvu/725

Rh it will be of special interest to the scientific student, will attract the general reader as well.

"It may not be superfluous to say, perhaps, what I feel sure the author himself would indorse, that this volume makes no pretension to be a final and exhaustive study of its subject. A complete theory of the infant mind will need to be built up by the combined efforts of many observers and thinkers. In the region of psychology, much more than in that of the physical sciences, repetition of observation and experiment is needed to check and verify the results of individual research. The secrets of infancy will only be read after many pairs of eyes have pored over the page. Though, as observed, M. Perez has made his studies unusually wide, it may be reasonably doubted whether, in some cases, he does not give exceptional instances as typical and representative. Certain it is that his notes respecting the first appearance of sensations—e. g., those of taste and smell, of the perceptions of distance, etc., of the movements of grasping objects, etc.—differ in some important respects from those of other observers. In certain particulars, too, this volume is less full than some other records, notably that of Professor Preyer's 'Die Seele des Kindes,' which, as it was published after the work before us, is not referred to. Hence, the student who wants to be quite abreast of the present results of research, will do well to read other records in company with this. This circumstance, however, does not in the least detract from the value of 'The First Three Years' as a rich mine of facts, and one of the fullest if not, indeed, the very fullest, monograph on its subject."

are indebted to an Englishman for another excellent work on the comparative anatomy of the vertebrates. It is true that this publication is a translation of Wiedersheim's excellent work, published at Jena in 1884. But a book rescued in this way from a nation which is too often content with books printed on poor paper, with crabbed type and interminable sentences, and placed before us by an original worker with his own annotations and additions in language and type which are as luminous as they are precise, is a boon for which one may be truly thankful.

The subject-matter is arranged according to organs and not according to groups of animals, and one must have a general knowledge of the animal kingdom, and especially of its classification, to fully profit by the work. This arrangement, as the author says, "seems to be the only possible one if the book is to be founded on a scientific basis, for it is most important that the student should grasp the fact that there has been an evolution of organs as well as of animals." The illustrations are numerous and most excellent. There is nothing more exasperating to a student than a dingy and well-worn anatomical woodcut, rendered a perfect muddle by a halo of diminutive and broken type connected with equally broken lines which penetrate the drawing like skewers, and become hopelessly entangled in a mesh of muscular fibers and tissues. It is refreshing to get hold of this work of Wiedersheim's with its clear and ample engravings, rendered intelligible by large guiding initials, with their dotted lines connecting definitely with structural details in the drawing, and there stopping.

Some slight errors, however, have crept in, as the statement that the tarsus of birds consists in the embryo of three elements instead of four. As the author so often deals with his subject ontogenetically, he should have referred to the rudimentary pelvis in the whales and certain limbless reptiles. As excellent descriptions with diagramatic figures are given showing the development of the feathers and hair, a paragraph might have been devoted to the development and various modifications of the claw, hoof, and nail, with the statement that in certain birds the embryo possesses the rudiments of nails on the digits of the wing.

The chapter on the urogenital organs, accompanied by excellent diagrammatic as well as shaded illustrations, especially those showing these parts in the monotremes and marsupials, will be appreciated by students.

Each section of the subject closes with