ful to Dr. Smith for his translation, which, if rather laboured at times, appears on the whole to be well and accurately done. Smaller Atlas of Illustrations of Clinical Surgery. By Jonathan Hutchinson, LL.D., F.R.S. London: West, Newman and Co. Mr. Jonathan Hutchinson's original Illustrations of Clinical Surgery in folio size, in two volumes and in price almost prohibitive has been more frequently a source of envy to those who could not afford to buy it than a joy to the envied few who could afford to do so. By the publication of the Smaller Atlas, a work dealing with similar but not the same subjects, by reason of its modest price, the possibility of possession is extended to the many. As in the case of the larger Atlas, the series of illustrations is conducted on no fixed and systematic lines; it is merely a collection of pathological curiosities, and, as Mr. Hutchinson remarks, he has selected what interested himself in the hope that it would interest others. Those who have attended his clinical séances and those who have examined the specimens in his clinical museum and are thus familiar with his presumable interests will have little doubt as to the great intrinsic value of this compilation. Others who from want of time or opportunity are debarred from personal attendance or examination will derive some secondary fire and enthusiasm for matters pathological by an inspection of the beautiful illustrations collected in the Atlas, and from reading the lucid explanatory letterpress interpolated between the plates. The latter are 136 in number and mostly coloured, and although chiefly illustrative of skin conditions they include many of general pathological interest. Medical men who have been unable by reading and clinical experience to keep themselves abreast of modern pathology will find these illustrations of skin conditions especially valuable. The older nomenclature has given place to a new order of things, and a conservative adherence to old names for old diseases is often accounted ignorance by those who have derived their learning in more modern schools. Metals. By Huntington and McMillan. New Edition. Longmans Green and Co. 7s. 6d. This book is based upon the work originally compiled by the late Prof. C. L. Bloxam in 1872, and re-edited and enlarged by Prof. Huntington in 1882. The present edition has been still further enlarged, and for the most part brought well up to date, under the joint authorship of Prof. Huntington and Mr. McMillan. In its present form, the book, although not full enough to satisfy the requirements of students who are taking up metallurgy as a speciality, will be found of great use to the chemical student and others who are desirous of gaining a rather fuller knowledge of the details and technicalities of metallurgical processes than are to be found in chemical text-books. The methods of "Coking" have been brought well up to date by the introduction of a description of the newest form of Semet-Solvay oven; and the section devoted to gaseous fuel and regenerative furnaces is much to be commended. It is to be regretted however that with the exception of a somewhat scant description of the electrical method for the production of aluminium no mention is made of this most modern of metallurgical engines, the electric furnace. Die Morphologie und Physiologie des pflanzlichen Zell Kerne Eine Kritische Litteraturstudie. Von Prof. Dr. A. Zimmermann. Mit 84 Figuren im Text. Jena: Verlag von Gustav Fischer, 1896. The author of this work has laid the general Botanical, and indeed Zoological, public under a debt of gratitude by producing an epitome of the multitudinous papers which have appeared on the subject of the vegetable cell-nucleus. We say Zoological public advisedly, because the results of their co-workers in the field of vegetable cytology are too often ignored by those who make animals their special study. But if there is one fact which stands out more clearly than another in the history of modern cytological investigation, it is this one, namely, that it is impossible, as well as unprofitable, to generalise either from the purely animal or the purely plant side in these inquiries. True it is that the partnership between Botany and Zoology has long ago become practically divorced, but that was but the inevitable consequence of the divergent paths followed in the evolution of the respective subjects of the two sciences. But the Protoplasm and Nucleus are structural entities common to both, and the conclusions arrived at on the two sides demand mutual completion and, not less, mutual checking. It is difficult enough to generalise soundly as it is, without going out of our way to avoid utilising the means of assistance which are accessible. Dr. Zimmermann's book is one which will prove of great use as a guide to the literature on the plant side. It is very thorough, and on the whole seems remarkably free from the mistakes which it is very difficult to exclude from such compilations. An account is given of the various histological methods in common use, together with their direct application to the study of the nucleus. The structure of the latter is discussed, and its behaviour during division is fully described. A few pages are devoted to a consideration of the physiology and function of the nucleus. In the special part of the book, the nucleus is treated of as it occurs in plants belonging to the various divisions of the vegetable kingdom, and many interesting facts are here brought incidentally under review. An admirable bibliography forms by no means the least valuable feature of what we are glad to be able to characterise as an extremely useful book. The Cell in Development and Inheritance. By Edmund B. Wilson, Ph.D. The Macmillan Company. 1896. Professor Wilson's work is a clear and vigorous history of a province of biology which has become far better known and more interesting to the general scientific reader since the publication of Hertwig's Work, Die Zelle und die Gewebe. And it is perhaps not to be regretted that this new treatise on cellular biology is written from a decidedly Boverian and Weismannistic standpoint. Such a method brings out the cardinal points of the subject in far sharper outline before the general reader, than would be the case with any amount of analytical treatment, though this latter might be better adapted to the requirements of the few. The introduction and the chapters dealing with the general characters of the cell-cell division-and germ cells, are all excellent, although in the description of the Mitotic Evolution perhaps undue importance is given to the centrosome as a cell organ. The general drift of experience seems rather to show that this structure is more the expression of the operation than the controller, of the intracellular forces. The chapter on the conjugation in unicellular organisms is particularly good, and is in fact by far the most lucid résumé of the observations made on this complex subject, which is in existence. It is only when we come to the chapters dealing with the vexed question of chromatin reduction in the generative cells that the work appears to be in any way open to serious criticism. The subject is at the present time entirely sub judice, and the attempt to treat it from a pronounced Weismannistic standpoint necessarily leads to an inflation of the importance of some observations, and the suppression of that of others, which is decidedly objectionable in our present state of knowledge. This is particularly apparent in the way the Author brings forward vom Rath's work on Salamander as lending much support to reduction in Weismann's sense, because this work has recently been shown by Meves1 to be quite unsound. The Spermatogenesis in Salamander completely corresponds with that described by Moore in Elasmobranchs and with Brauer's interpretation of the same phenomena in Ascaris. It is thus apparent that whatever the value of the process described in Copepods by Häcker, may eventually turn out to be, the universality of the "reductionstheilung" does not at present hold. The argument as based on the results of vegetable cytology is marred by the fact that the author does not always appear to be clear as to the standpoint of the authors he quotes, and in one such instance the respective facts are actually transposed; in fact throughout this chapter the author's endeavour to maintain his standpoint, although persistent, strikes us as being rather prejudiced. 1 Ueber die Entwicklung der Männlichen geschlechtszellen von Salamandra maculosa. Arch. f. Mikr. Anatomie, Bd. 48. 1896. The immediately succeeding chapters contains a complete description and classification of cell organs into persistent and non-persistent types of the different forms of spheres, and much interesting matter relating to the other constituents of the cell. In chapter viii we find a full description of " cell division and development" and in the succeeding chapters there is a very clear and readable discussion of the several theories of development, through all of which the author's own special knowledge is utilised in full, as in the passages dealing with the nature and causes of differentiation, the Promorphological relations of Cleavage and many more. The whole work thus forms a most useful résumé of a large subject, the literature of which is so voluminous that it continually threatens to obscure the contained substratum of observations, and an epitome of this sort is a most important acquisition, as it brings the questions which legitimately spring up, when all the observations in each department are taken together, clearly into view. Der Lichtsinn augenloser Thiere. Eine biologische Studie. Dr. Willibald Nagel. Jena: Gustav Fischer, 1896. The author here reprints an interesting and useful lecture on "Sight without Eyes". This lecture, which takes up 48 of the 120 pages of his work, is, as the title signifies, a general account of what is known as the dermatoptic function. The second part gives a detailed account of the author's experiments on Molluscs, which, though blind (naturally or artificially), exemplify this function by reacting in various definite ways to the light stimulus. The third part is made up of appendices which are expansions of important points dealt with too briefly in the lecture. The work closes with a useful bibliography of some eighty references dealing with the physiology of sensation, chiefly of light. These range from Johannes Müller's classical Zur vergleichenden Physiologie des Gesichtssinnes (1826) to the author's own recent contributions. From this outline of the contents it will be seen that the work does not pretend to be much more than a review and discussion of facts already known, viz., that certain lower forms of animals without eyes. have acquired the power of reacting to sudden changes in the intensity of light. As such, however, it is timely and interesting. Biologists will be grateful to the author for pointing out the interesting fact that those animals which possess hard, protective shells into which they can retreat and defy their enemies mostly react to sudden diminutions of light, e.g., to passing shadows, such shadows no doubt warning them of the approach of a foe. On the other hand, animals which generally live under sand, from which they occasionally emerge, react on sudden brightenings of the light. The author distinguishes between these two different nerve reactions by the use of the words Lichtempfindung and Schattenempfindung. C* The title of the work is certainly happier than the title of the lecture on which it is founded. It is quite true that both words "sight" and "eyes" are only sharply definable when used of human sight and eyes, and that, when the lower forms of organs for appreciating variations in light intensity are brought into line, the terms are often of more than doubtful applicability. But we do not think that this uncertainty as to what the comparative anatomist and physiologist, as apart from the human anatomist and physiologist, means by sight and eyes justifies the author in applying either term to the sensitiveness of certain skins to light. This, indeed, the author recognises, for on page 18 he modifies the word Sehen into Lichtsinn, and rightly adopts this modification for the title of his book. Most people would be inclined to affirm that as the word "sight" was already in use, its meaning was fixed before we had any knowledge of the simpler eyes of the invertebrates, and that, while there can be no objection to calling all organs for the appreciation of light sensations "eyes,” we cannot say that all the eyes see unless, from their possession of a dioptric apparatus or otherwise, we can conclude that they are capable of appreciating external form-differences. The author writes as an authority, and all that is at present known of the remarkable sensitiveness to light possessed by the skins of many lower invertebrates (the list of which, by the way, he has not exhausted) he discusses with knowledge and ability. His treatise makes it perfectly clear that we are just as much in the dark as to the real causes of these diffuse light sensations of certain skins as we are of the true causes of the light sensation of our own specialised organ of vision. It is interesting to note that many of the surfaces sensitive to light, e.g., the siphons of Psammobia, the skin of a "decapitated" Amphioxus, are absolutely free from pigment, but nevertheless the author admits that pigment must have some definite connection with sight, inasmuch as it is always present in specialised visual organs, except in albinoes, which are abnormal ("Missbildungen "). As to what this connection is, the author merely repeats the old suggestion that it prevents diffusion of the light rays by sheathing the visual cells, in order that they may clearly distinguish separate points of light. On the other hand, it may be pointed out that it is also always present in eyes which do not "see" in the restricted sense above sketched, and which do not require to distinguish separate points of light. Cellulose. An outline of the chemistry of the structural elements of plants, with reference to their natural history and industrial uses. By Cross and Bevan. Longmans. An almost inevitable result of the increasing activity of scientific investigators of the present day, and the consequent accumulation of scientific literature in almost every department, is the need for the appearance of definite monographs, in which, by specially qualified hands, the vast amount of crude material scattered here and there may |