Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 30.djvu/727

Rh Thomas Whittaker, James Sully, Grant Allen, and Professor R. Adamson, deal respectively with vol. ii of J. H. Green's philosophical works, C. Rendouvier, J. Delbœuf, M. Guyau, and J. Volkelt. All these criticisms are exceptionally able. The notes upon new books are copious and interesting.

little book, as its name implies, is a hand-book of zoölogy. Chapter I, under "Physiological Zoölogy," deals with the tissues and functions of the animal. Chapter II treats of "Zoölogical Classification," and following these is a rapid survey of the animal kingdom, fully illustrated by woodcuts, which, in the majority of cases, were used in the first edition of this work, published in 1869. Some of the cuts are exceedingly poor, though in the main correct. Fossil forms are presented with the recent forms as they should be, and so one gets a better idea of the range of the animal kingdom. It is a book that the amateur collector and the young zoölogist should have, as much information in a condensed form is embodied in its pages.

It might be expected that the book would be conservative and somewhat antiquated, from the known antagonism of its author to the modern views of derivation. It is interesting to see, however, that the leaven of evolution is working slowly but surely even here.

In the preface to the first edition. Sir William says: "I have avoided the modern doctrines of a 'physical basis of life,' and of 'derivation,' because I believe them to rest on grounds very different from true science, and therefore to be unsuitable for the purposes of a text-book." Having in the first edition arranged his material rigidly under the branches of Cuvier, he says: "I have not scrupled to adhere to them, as the expression of a grand and philosophical idea, essential to an accurate and enlarged conception of Nature"; and, again: "This fourfold division includes the whole animal kingdom, and is the only rational one which can be based on type or plan of structure. . . . The attempts which have been made to introduce additional branches or provinces I regard as retrograde steps; such, for example, is the province Cœlenterata of Leuckart," etc., etc. And now in sixteen years—a long time, it is true, for most minds to admit so much—we find the author not only cancelling his protests against a physical basis of life and derivation, but reluctantly taking the retrograde steps in adopting essentially the classification of Leuckart, Cœlenterates and all, though he turns back longingly to the quatenary classification of Cuvier, which he says may still be regarded as of scientific value.

May many active years of work be vouch-safed to this delightful and charming naturalist, and in these years may he prepare another edition of his hand-book, with still further omissions and admissions!

has produced an admirable book in the one before us. A student will certainly get a clear idea of the animal kingdom if he follows the stimulating advice and directions which the book offers. The following plan of study is carried out:

He has avoided the almost universal practice, so common in English and most American text-books, of commencing with the lowest known forms of life, and following up step by step to the highest, thus unavoidably conveying the false idea of a continuous ladder in creation. On the contrary, he commences his examinations with the insects as being animals that every one may easily get. The pupil is told how to see and what to see, and is permitted to