A Treatise on Zoology

Abstract

THE erratic order in which the various volumes of Prof. Lankester's treatise are appearing is, from the nature of their subject, a matter of very little consequence, and we are glad to welcome now this installment of the protozoan chapter. It is the second fascicle of part i., of which the first fascicle, containing the introduction and the groups not here included, ihas still to appear. The inconvenience of the intended: arrangement of parts is clearly demonstrated, and it is very fortunate that it has not resulted in the detention at the press of the valuable essays which make up this volume. A large part of the editor's difficulties have resulted, it is clear, from his adherence to the plan of producing bound volumes gf nearly uniform: size—in following, that is to say, the mode of publication of the recent “Cambridge Natural History” and of other similar works of collaboration. We Ibelieve it would prove to be in the interest of authors arid readers alike if no attempt were made by the editors of series of this kind to produce periodically completed volumes, and if the separate articles were Issued uniformly, but unbound, in the style of German monographs. The total expense to the purchaser of othe whole series could remain the same by an obvious arrangement, while the gain to many specialists would be immense. We have a case in point in the present volume. Prof. Minchin's valuable monograph on the Sporozoa occupies about one-half of the whole volume, and might, we gather, have been already for some time in our hands if it had appeared separately in paper Covers. Its subject is precisely one in which publication might well have been both early and individual in the interests of the medical profession, for which it has, perhaps, its chief importance at the present time. The deliberate manufacture of volumes, as such, while we can see nothing at all to recommend it, is exposed at the same time to the serious objection of stimulating over-production. The publication of a complete “Cambridge Natural History,” and now of what is virtually an Oxford treatise, suggests inevitably that among the whole body of English zoologists a good deal of research has been recently sacrificed to textbook writing, of which a large part, however conscientious, has been redundant.

A Treatise on Zoology.

Edited by E. Ray Lankester, &c. Part i. Introduction and Protozoa. Second Fascicle. Pp. vi + 451. (London: A. and C. Black, 1903.) Price 15s. net.