Echinodermata, Vermes, Molluscoidea, Mollusca, and Arthropoda, the Vertebrata being reserved for the next volume. In the introduction we are reminded how even in palaeontology we have advanced beyond the Linnæan and Cuvierian conceptions, when we read: "Those holding to the theory of descent, evolution, or transmutation, look upon varieties, species, subgenera, genera, families, orders, classes, and sub-kingdoms, as distinctions of merely transient importance, corresponding to the state of our information at the present time; it being assumed that by means of gradual transmutation during the course of ages all organisms have become evolved from a single primitive cell, or from a few primitive types."
This excellent German work, made accessible to the strictly English reader under purely American supervision, forms a work of reference that zoologists will find most useful to consult. Even with its more than 700 pages of letterpress, containing 1476 figures, its subject matter is very far from exhausted, and its value lies in its summarized information. This is evident when we refer to the Insecta, revised by no less than the greatest palæontological authority on the subject, Prof. S.H. Scudder, and find that the information is compressed in ten pages. Those who are familiar with the palæontological writings on this subject by Prof. Scudder alone will not fail to comprehend that even this portly volume is but a digest of the ancient history of animal life.
However much in our daily life we may somewhat avoid the too practical man, there can be little doubt we want more practical zoologists. The average naturalist to-day is perhaps concerned overmuch with the outsides of animals, and a very large proportion indeed of conclusions and theories are based on animal appearances. Surface zoology in a strict sense should rank very little higher than surface geology; but how few of us have now either the time, opportunity, or desire for undertaking even
