Abstract
PROF. REESE, of West Virginia University, [is best known as an embryologist, and the author of a memoir on the development of Alligator mississippiensis, published a few years ago in the Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, a reprint of which, with slight additions, forms about one-fourth of this book. When hunting for embryological material in the swamps of Florida the author has had many opportunities of studying the habits of the alligator, and his interesting observations are embodied in the chapter entitled “Biology of the Crocodilia.” The chapters on the skeleton and on the nervous system are partly, those on the digestive, urogenital, respiratory, and vascular systems mainly, by the author. The description of the muscular system is a translation from the account in Bronn's “Thierreich,” which is here and there quoted as the work of Bronn himself, the fact being apparently overlooked that Prof. H. G. Bronn, the founder of the well-known zoological encyclopædia, “Die Klassen und Ordnungen des Thierreichs,” was a opalæontologist who never busied himself with reptiles, and died fully ten years before the reptilian section was taken in hand by Prof. C. K. Hoffmann, whose name is not even quoted in the very carelessly compiled bibliography at the end of the book under review.
The Alligator and its Allies.
By Dr. A. M. Reese. Pp. xi + 358. (New York and London: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1915.) Price 10s. 6d. net.
Article PDF
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
B., G. The Alligator and its Allies . Nature 96, 367 (1915). https://doi.org/10.1038/096367a0
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/096367a0