NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS.
The meeting of the fourth International Congress of Zoology in England was the most important scientific event in the zoological annals of last year. It is possible that the published proceedings of a Congress do not altogether represent the work achieved, for if in the multitude of counsellors there is wisdom, there is also the creative impulse that potentially exists wherever real workers and students are gathered together. It is thus frequently that the most important results of a Congress are not incorporated in published Proceedings. It still remains, however, that this volume is zoologically a most valuable one, and that perhaps not by the record of any new discovery, but by the detailed discussions on many knotty points. We may instance that on the position of Sponges in the animal kingdom opened by Prof. Yves Delage. Up to the end of the first half of the nineteenth century it was still an open question whether Sponges were plants or animals. In the discussion on the origin of mammals, Prof. Seeley inclined to a reptilian derivation. "The remains thus far discovered in Permian rocks show so near an approach of the higher reptiles to the lower mammals, that it is reasonable to believe that the interval between them is now so small that it may be obliterated by future discoveries." Prof. Osborn, of New York, referring to the Permian records and the temptation to connect the herbivorous section of Anomodonts with the Monotremes, considered the many striking points of resemblance between these reptiles and mammals as due to parallelism, similar characters having been independently acquired. Prof. Marsh—who is, alas! no longer with us—held to the opinion that in the amphibians, especially in the oldest forms, there are hints of a true relationship with both reptiles
