Einfuhrung in die Vergleichende Anatomie der Wirbeltiere

Abstract

THE fatalities whieh may overtake standard textbooks are numerous and complex in their action, but on the whole growth, the result of repeated editions, is of the commonest causes of extinction. With the corporation of new material in each edition, the scientific merit of a work may rise, but unfortunately its commercial value will certainly decline; from an examination book with a wide circulation amongst students it becomes a reference book, used only by experts. This is a difficulty which faces every author in the preparation of a new edition of a standard text-book; he may do his duty at the expense of circulation, or he may throw overboard older work to make room for the new, and thus maintain or even increase the circulation, or he may do as Prof. Wieder-sheim has done—allow the work to increase with the growth of knowledge, and issue another book altogether, into which are condensed the merits and essentials of the older work.

Einfuhrung in die Vergleichende Anatomie der Wirbeltiere.

By Prof. Robert Wiedersheim. Pp. xxii + 471; illustrated. (Jena: Gustav Fischer, 1907.) Price 11 marks.