But geographical botany today does not stop with the distribution of the wild flora. Cultivated plants, native useful plants, weeds, and the flora of waste places come in for their share of consideration and are treated in turn. The plants whose seeds are mixed with those of cultivated plants and are thus sowed and grown involuntarily are placed in the group of cultivated plants. But a more important group is formed. by the species introduced and supported incidentally by the cultivation and occupation of the soil by man. A notable instance of this is a group of "saltpetre plants" due to the use of nitrate fertilizers.

It would become tedious to enumerate the many striking features of the work and the ideas which they suggest. The work is in some sort a summary of geographical botany as it now stands. So much material necessarily takes on a new aspect when brought together and digested, though we have been more or less acquainted with a large part of it in its scattered condition. As part of a whole, each fact seems something new. We may safely predict that a great impetus will be given to this kind of botanical work in regions remote from Germany by Dr. Drude's book, since it presents a practical outline which will not fail to be taken advantage of. Our own country furnishes many excellent opportunities which the various biological and botanical surveys now in progress are already beginning to seize. The example of such a geographico-botanical survey of a large country, on a large scale, will be a great inspiration.

Dr. Drude's book is most interesting reading, and as a compendium of the latest results in a growing and important department, as well as in its more immediate purpose, is of the highest value.

EDITOR'S TABLE.

THE bestiarians are still actively engaged in endeavoring to prevent humanitarians from prosecuting their good work of relieving human disease and suffering. Their latest move is to endeavor to get national legislation to suppress physiologic research by vivisection in the Dis

trict of Columbia. There are various reasons why humanitarians should take especial pains to prevent this attempt to restrict human knowledge and prevent the dimunition of human suffering. They suppose that National legislation once secured, State legislation will be easily obtained. Perhaps they expect to get a national law forbidding such research in all parts of the United States! Such people must, however, present very clean hands in the cause of prevention of cruelty to animals before they appear as advocates of the suppression of the most important method known of reducing human suffering. Do any of them wear articles made from the furs of animals? Do they carry pocket-books or grip-sacks made of the skins of animals? Do they permit animals to be plucked of feathers for their comfort or ornament? Finally, do they encourage the enormous slaughter of animals by land and sea, for food and other purposes?

There is much important work done in the departments at Washington which will be affected by the bill that is soon likely to come before the Senate, and the educational institutions of the highest grade will be injured by it if it passes.

It will,

The bill it is said will be favorably reported to the Senate. however, probably not come up for final action before the next session. Meanwhile biologists and humanitarians generally should urge on their Senators and Representatives the importance of defeating the bill in the interest of progress and humanity. Let them write to their Representatives for the Public Documents on Antivivisection of the District Committee of the Senate. The Medical men are active, but the biologists are not yet sufficiently awake to the importance of the situation. If members of the National legislature are fully informed, they will hardly pass the bill.

RECENT LITERATURE.

The Cambridge Natural History.'-Sometime ago we referred to the volume of this series containing the Molluscs and Brachiopods; the second volume in order of publication is now before us. As in the former volume there is a great lack of uniformity in the different parts

1 The Cambridge Natural History, Vol. V. Peripatus by Adam Sedgwick; Myriapods by F. G. Sinclair; Insects, Part I by David Sharp. London, Macmillan and Co., 1895, pp. xi-584.

which compose it, a lack, in part attributable to the individuality of the authors, in part to an apparent failure on the part of the editors to lay down guiding rules for their authors.

Mr. Sedgwick devotes 26 pages to Peripatus, giving a good general account of the group, in its structure, development and habits, and following it with a list of the known species, essentially the same as that in his previous monograph. From his familiarity with the group no

one was better able to treat of the group than he.

Mr. Sinclair should have been almost equally familiar with the Myriapods for he has published both on the structure and the embryology of the group, and yet his account is much less satisfactory. The general account of the habits is good and is based to a large extent upon the author's own observations, but we wish he had put into English some of the facts ascertained by vom Rath. The classification adopted, that of Koch, is rather antiquated (1847) while the investigations of Grassi, to say nothing of the later researches of Schmidt and Kenyon, show that the Scolopendrellidæ and Pauropidæ are not to be set aside as distinct from the Diplopoda, and the elevation of Cermatia to ordinal rank has very little in its support. One or two typographical errors are annoying. Scudder's figures of fossil Myriapods are attributed to "Meek and Worth," the author persisting in depriving the American paleontologist of the last syllable of his name. Here may be mentioned one of the inequalities of the work. While in treating of Peripatus a diagnosis is given of all (?) known species, in the Myriapods only the families are thus treated. Concluding the account is a discussion of the relationships of the group, and in this we find mixed up myths from Pliny and facts from other authors, including (p. 78) a quotation showing that the people of Rhytium were driven from their quarters by Myriapods, a statement which also occurs (p. 30) in another place. But in this whole part we see nothing but a feeble groping, not the firmness of the master hand. The chapter as a whole shows the lack of editorial supervision; its prolixity on minor points should have been suppressed.

The best of the book is that by Mr. Sharp-accounts of the Aptera, Orthoptera, Neuroptera and the lower Hymnoptera, the author using these names in the widest sense. In the introductory sections, dealing with the anatomy and embryology of the Hexapods, the author is evidently less at his ease that in the more systematic portion. Here he has given us one of the best of all books upon insects. The strictly systematic portion is well done, while the account of habits and transformation is excellent, and the perspective good. Thus the Mallophaga

are accorded 6 pages, the White Ants, 44. On the whole we like the retention of the almost Linnean system of classification, especially since the systems which are proposed in its place are open to almost as many objections as the older scheme; the remarks made upon this point seem to us especially appropriate.

The illustrations, of which there are some 370, are all fresh and are very well engraved. Some of them would, we think, look better in "half-tone," especially those dealing with anatomical and developmental points, but against this is the apparent inability of English printers to get good results from such plates, (witness several translations from the German where these half-tone illustrations, beautifully printed in the original, are extremely muddy). One more fault and we are done. The price charged for the work seems to us much too high.

W. Fraser Rae's biography of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, that remarkable man "who could rival Congreve in comedy and Pitt and Fox in eloquence" is announced by Messrs. Henry Holt & Co. It is to be in two volumes, and to include portraits and facsimile autographs of Sheridan and his famous contemporaries. Interesting documents written by the Prince of Wales, Sheridan, the Duke of Wellington, and the Marquis of Wellesley will be made public for the first time. The Introduction is by the Marquis of Dufferin and Ava, who is a great grandson of Sheridan.

Geological Biology.'-This treatise, in octavo form of 395 pages, is a study of organisms and their time-relations. The general laws of evolution are stated, and their formulation explained by detailed descriptions of characteristic examples. The examples are, for the most part, taken from the invertebrate forms. Mutability of species is illustrated by Spirifer strictus Martin, var. S. loganii Hall, the progressive evolution of class, ordinal, subordinal, etc., characters, by Magellania flavescens; the modification of generic characters is shown by the lifehistories of Brachiopod families. The history of the Spirifers, a study of Cephalopods, and the evolution of the suture lines of Ammonoids, are each in turn used to demonstrate the fundamental laws of evolution. Throughout the book the author emphasizes the idea that these laws are best understood by a study of fossil forms.

The closing chapter sets forth the philosophy of evolution from the author's point of view. Beginning with the statement that "Evolu1Geological Biology. An Introduction to the Geological History of Organisms. By Henry Shaler Williams. New York, 1895. Henry Holt & Co.

tion is concerned with two distinct fields of human inquiry,” he distinguishes them as follows:

"On the one hand, evolution is the name for the natural order of unfolding of the characters of organic beings that have lived on the earth; on the other hand, evolution is the name for our conception of the mode of operation of the fundamental energy of the universe. Thus it will be seen that the notion of God is as intimately involved in a discussion of evolution as is the notion of an organism." He sees in evolution the mode of creation of organic beings, a process that has been more or less continuous throughout geologic ages. "It is this continuation of the process of phenomenalizing that distinguishes the mode of creation in the organic realm from that in the lower realm of inorganic matter. Whatever is characteristic of organisms was not created at once, but has been unfolded by degrees, and there is no reason for supposing that the process is not still going on. Such expressions as 'effort,' 'growth force,' 'reactions,', etc., used in describing the phenomena of evolution, all express the notion of the preëxistence of some unphenomenal property, or power, or potency, which constitutes the cause of the particu lar characters which are acquired by organisms in the process of their evolution."

The tendency of organisms to vary is designated by the author as primarily a force acting from within, to which he gives the name "intrinsic evolution." Differentiation of form and function are expressions of vitality, but these are modified by conditions of environment and natural selection.

A summary of the leading points in the work are thus given:

"The great facts attested by geology are that the grander and more radical divergences of structure were earliest attained; that, as time advanced, in each line intrinsic evolution has been confined to the acquirement of less and less important characters; such facts emphasize with overwhelming force the conclusion that the march of the evolution has been the expression of a general law of organic nature, in which events have occured in regular order, with a beginning, a normal order of succession, a limit to each stage, and in which the whole organic kingdom has been mutually correlated."

This book will prove instructive to the general reader, both on account of its facts and generalizations. The author, as a distinguished specialist in paleontology presents facts in an authoritative way, so that the reader may feel safe in his premises. The inferences made are obvious, so that while there is little exposition of efficient causes of evolution in the scientific sense, one can agree with the general conclusions.