A Manual of Zoology An Elementary Course of Practical Zoology

Abstract

PROFS. PARKER AND HASWELL have embarked upon a difficult and somewhat ambitious undertaking. To compress an account of practically the whole animal kingdom, with 300 illustrations, into a handbook of 550 pages, intended for beginners, is certainly no light task at the present day. Such manuals were quite possible so long as it was considered sufficient for a book of this kind to deal with the exteriors and the habits of animals, and to consist for the greater part of illustrations of monkeys, beasts and birds, while about one-fifth or less was taken up by reptiles, fishes and insects, with perhaps a figure or two of zoophytes or diatoms from Barbados earth. But the book before us is nothing if not scientific and modern in its treatment of the subject. It attempts in the first place to do justice to the claims of every one of the principal existing groups of animals, fairly and without favour or prejudice, giving an outline of the structure and morphology of the more important types in each class. In the second place, it introduces the reader to the fundamental conceptions and problems of zoology, such as evolution, classification and phylogeny, distribution in space and time, conjugation, fertilisation, development, and the cell theory. In a work of scope so wide and comprehensive, with at the same time such narrow limits of space, it requires much care and ingenuity to steer a just course between the Scylla of over-condensation and perplexity and the Charybdis of vague incompleteness The inexperienced reader becomes bewildered, in the first case with excess, and in the second with lack of detail, so that he is at a loss how to sort out, or how to connect, the material which he absorbs. The danger is, therefore, that a treatise of this kind may be used less by the beginner, who requires to be stimulated and interested, than by the more advanced student, who desires merely to “look up” work he has done; in other words, that it may degenerate into a mere cram-book. It must be admitted, however, that if it is possible to succeed in such a task, the authors have done so. The book contains a great store of information, chosen with judgment and set forth with skill. In order to avoid as much as possible the dangers above pointed out, the authors have restricted the extent of ground covered by leaving out some of the less important groups, such as Chimæroids among fishes, by omitting all descriptions of extinct groups, and by dealing only very briefly with embryology. Perhaps the chief value of the work is in its numerous and admirable illustrations, of which the authors had a copious stock to draw upon in the pages of their larger two-volume “Text-Book.” Amongst them are some coloured diagrams of the circulation of the blood in various types, for the most part clear enough, but Fig. 204, illustrating the circulation of a fish, certainly requires a good deal of looking at before its meaning can be grasped. The book is intended, we are told, principally for the requirements of the students in higher classes of schools; but is it necessary, even in this educational stratum, to explain the meaning of commensalism by coining and printing such a word as “messmateism,” which looks at first like some new form of theosophy? These are, however, but minor points. Judged as a whole, the book is one which fills a distinct gap in zoological literature, and fills it well, as a handy book of reference, though we are inclined to think that the authors have attempted rather too much, and that the class of readers who will benefit most by their work will not be quite those for whose use the book was intended.

A Manual of Zoology.

By the late Prof. T. J. Parker Prof. W. A. Haswell. Pp. xv + 550. (London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1899.)

An Elementary Course of Practical Zoology.

By the late Prof. T. J. Parker Prof. W. N. Parker. Pp. xii + 608, with 156 Illustrations. (London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1900.)