offers no criticism of the view there given. In treating of Alcohol, he relates a few experiments, supporting the views of Baudot against those of L'Allemand, Duroy, and Perrin. We were very much interested in the promise given in the early part of the book to afford decided proofs that the human body could subsist for years on a diet composed mainly of alcohol, but were disappointed to find that the instances drawn from the author's experience are limited to one old man, who was said to have lived for about twenty years on a finger'slength of bread, a bottle of gin, and a little tobacco per diem. It is to be hoped that, the next time a case of this kind comes before a competent observer, he will take the trouble to make one simple and easy series of determinations, in fact merely to ascertain the amount of urea passed per diem. One would learn more one way or the other by such a course, than by listening to the report of half a dozen authorities, however respectable.

We are not surprised to find so few results from Dr. Anstie's experiments, because we believe his method of investigation a faulty one. He submits the whole organism to the influence of a drug, and then reads off the results by the light of the physiology he already possesses. This symptom arises from the paralysis of the cord, that from the paralysis of the sympathetic, and so on. The truer method seems to us to be what may be called the analysing or dissecting method, that which has produced such brilliant results in the hands of Koelliker and Bernard, and which has made urari a most powerful weapon in the armoury of the physiologist. Dr. Anstie's method, however, is more in consonance with the Coleridgean idea of life which pervades his book, which leads him to the frequent use of that horrible Coleridgean word, "Individuation." Life,' he insists, 'is not any special force, nor is it any collocation of forces; it is not in the organism, for it is the very organism itself.' What will he say if we suggest that it is the organism with the forces in it?

LX.-HUXLEY'S LECTURES ON ANATOMY.

LECTURES ON THE ELEMENTS OF COMPARATIVE ANATOMY. By Thomas Henry Huxley, F.R.S. London, 1864. Churchill.

ONE of the conditions upon which the Museum of John Hunter was intrusted by the British Government to the care of the corporation (now the Royal College) of Surgeons, was "that one course of

lectures, not less than twenty-four in number, on comparative anatomy and other subjects, illustrated by the preparations, shall be given every year by some member of the company." The professorship established accordingly by the council of the College has, for upwards of sixty years, been the means not only of expounding the contents of the noble Museum, which has been gradually accumulated around the original Hunterian collection, but also of promulgating many novelties, both of fact and of theory, of affording to the scientific public a resumé of the existing state of knowledge on subjects more or less connected with the objects of the Museum, and of giving valuable abstracts of the recent labours of our continental brethren, according to the varying bent of the different lecturers.

The chair being restricted by the terms of the grant to members of the College of Surgeons, a list of those by whom it has been in turn occupied by no means affords a complete representation of the cultivators of biological science in the metropolis. In early years it was held by men, best known as practical surgeons, but who had the wisdom to appreciate the advantages of a training in the too often neglected paths of pure science. Such were Everard Home, Charles Bell, Lawrence, Brodie, Anthony Carlisle, Green, and others. It was not until the appointment to the Professorship in 1836 of Mr. Owen, then junior Conservator to the Museum, that a purely professional anatomist, with almost unlimited resources at his command by way of illustration, was able to unfold year after year, with a success that was well appreciated by one of the most intelligent and best educated audiences in Britain, the manifold diversities of structure and function in the animal kingdom. Professor Owen's lectures added decidedly to the scientific prestige of the institution at which they were delivered. Since the cessation of his connection with the College, the Professorship has several times changed hands. Half the lectures were for several years devoted to the illustration of the microscopical collection by the late Professor Quekett, the other twelve were delivered by Messrs. Busk, Savory, and Gulliver, in succession. Once more the whole course has been united, and happily in the hands of one of the most able, philosophical and original comparative anatomists that this country has produced.

Oral lectures, however pleasing to listen to, on account of the brilliancy of their delivery or the abundance and aptness of their illustration, are accessible only to a limited number, and to these privileged few the impression left upon the mind is often transient.

The hearer is carried on from sentence to sentence without time to reflect on or to digest the multitudinous facts put before him. The most tenacious memory cannot carry away more than a fraction of the stores of knowledge, which though given forth in an hour, have often taken the lecturer months of persevering labour to acquire. The satisfaction with which Professor Huxley's appointment to the Hunterian lectureship was generally received will therefore be greatly enhanced by the announcement, in the preface of the volume before us, that he proposes, if circumstances permit, to publish from year to year the substance of his lectures" and by that process to bring out eventually a comprehensive, though condensed, systematic work on Comparative Anatomy." How much such a work is wanted our readers will scarcely need to be reminded. The present volume, the first of the promised series, oddly enough, in its own contents, rather interferes with the harmony of the design thus introduced to our notice. This design is to give an account of the principal modifications of the organization of animals in a descending scale, commencing with "Man and the other Primates," as in the arrangement of Cuvier's" Regne Animal." A general introduction on the "classification of animals," as a guide to the principles upon which classification is based, and including an outline of the author's views upon the arrangement and divisions of the larger groups, is a perfectly appropriate commencement to the work. Such an introduction occupies about a third of the volume, and in itself forms a complete and valuable, though necessarily brief and elementary hand-book to the science. As the divisions of the work itself are to coincide with zoological groups, and not with special organs or systems, the remainder of the volume, consisting of a description of the modifications of a special portion of the organization throughout a whole sub-kingdom, cannot but be considered as somewhat of an interruption to the direct continuity of the work as a whole. However, in selecting the subject of the "Vertebrate Skull" as part of his first Hunterian course of lectures, Professor Huxley had doubtless excellent reasons, and we must not quarrel with the publication of this most valuable essay in the well illustrated form in which it now appears, although it seems at first sight rather out of place in the volume under notice.

The first part of the work is, as we have said, devoted to an essay on the "classification of animals," or rather a general outline of the principal characteristics of the larger groups into which, according to

the author's views, animal organizations, morphologically arrange themselves. The object of these lectures is thus stated :

"Morphological classification, then, acquires its highest importance as a statement of the empirical laws of the correlation of structures; and its value is in proportion to the precision and the comprehensiveness with which those laws, the definitions of the groups adopted in the classification, are stated. So that, in attempting to arrive at clear notions concerning classification, the first point is to ascertain whether any, and if so what, groups of animals can be established, the members of which shall be at once united together and separated from those of all other groups, by well defined structural characters. And it will be most convenient to commence the inquiry with groups of that order which are commonly called CLASSES, and which are enumerated in an order and arrangement, the purpose of which will appear more fully by and by, in the following table."

The table referred to (p. 6), which shows the relations of Professor Huxley's divisons to the four Cuvierian Sub-Kingdoms, contains the following classes:- Gregarinida, Infusoria, Rhizopoda, Spongida, Hydrozoa, Actinozoa, Polyzoa, Brachiopoda, Ascidioida, Lamellibranchiata, Branchiogasteropoda, Pulmogasteropoda, Pteropoda, Cephalopoda, Scolecida, Echinodermata, Annelida, Crustacea, Arachnida, Myriapoda, Insecta, Pisces, Amphibia, Reptilia, Aves, and Mammalia.

"It is not necessary for my purpose that the groups which are named on the preceding table should be absolutely and precisely equivalent one to another; it is sufficient that the sum of them is the whole of the Animal Kingdom, and that each of them embraces one of the principal types, or plans of modification, of animal form ; so that, if we have a precise knowledge of that which constitutes the typical structure of each of these groups, we shall have, so far, an exhaustive knowledge of the Animal Kingdom.

"I shall endeavour, then, to define-or, where definition is not yet possible, to describe a typical example of—these various groups. Subsequently, I shall take up some of those further classificatory questions which are open to discussion; inquiring how far we can group these classes into larger assemblages, with definite and constant characters; and, on the other hand, how far the existing subdivisions of the classes are well based or otherwise. But the essential matter, in the first place, is to be quite clear about the different classes, and to have a distinct knowledge of all the sharply-definable modifications of animal structure which are discernible in the Animal Kingdom."

Professor Huxley's views of the grouping of the classes belonging to the Vertebrate sub-kingdom, may be gathered from the following extracts, to which we direct the attention of the student, as the idea that the Amphibia are but a sub-division of the Reptilia, still lingers in many of our text-books, and even in some works of higher scientific pretensions.

"If we now seek to construct definitions of the first two classes of the Vertebrata, PISCES and AMPHIBIA, we shall meet with some difficulties, arising partly from the wide variations observable in the structure of fishes, and partly from the close affinity which exists between them and the Amphibia."

"There is a striking contrast between the close affinity of the fish and the amphibian, and the wide separation of the Amphibia from the succeeding classes, all of which possess, in the embryonic state, a well-developed amnion and allantois, the latter almost always taking on, directly or indirectly, a respiratory function."

"The class of AVES consists of animals so essentially similar to Reptiles in all the most essential features of their organization, that Birds may be said to be merely an extremely modified and aberrant Reptilian type."

"Between Aves and MAMMALIA there is a hiatus, not perhaps, in some respects, quite so wide as that between Amphibia and Reptilia, but still very considerable.” "Thus the classes of the Vertebrata are capable of being grouped into three provinces: (I.) The Ichthyoids (comprising Fishes and Amphibia), defined by the presence of branchise at some period of existence, the absence of an amnion, the absence, or rudimentary development, of the allantois, nucleated blood-corpuscles, and, as will be seen by and by, a parasphenoid in the skull; (II.) The Sauroids, defined by the absence of branchiæ at all periods of existence, the presence of a well-developed amnion and allantois, a single occipital condyle, a complex mandibular ramus articulated to the skull by a quadrate bone, nucleated blood-corpuscles and no parasphenoid, comprising Reptiles and Birds; and (III.) the Mammals, devoid of branchiæ and with an amnion and an allantois, but with two occipital condyles and a well-developed basi-occipital and no parasphenoid; a simple mandibular ramus articulated with the squamosal and not with the quadratum, with mammary glands and with red non-nucleated blood-corpuscles."

The sixth lecture is devoted to the consideration of the primary sub-divisions of the Mammalia, larger than orders. In the first place, Professor Huxley gives his adhesion to the tripartite division of the class, suggested by M. de Blainville, into Ornithodelphia, Didelphia, and Monodelphia, which he considers preferable to the later proposition to divide mammals into two great groups only, Implacentalia and Placentalia.

The division of the sub-class Monodelphia, which contains at least a dozen orders, is, and long has been, a subject of much difficulty and controversy; the first principles upon which such a classi fication should be based, have not even been agreed upon. As might be expected, ample demonstration is given in this chapter of the inherent weakness of the system, founded on cerebral characters, lately promulgated by Professor Owen, who alone, among zoologists of eminence in this country or abroad, appears to be thoroughly satisfied with its infallibility. The classification based on the structure of the placenta, as put forth by Von Baer and Eschricht, is then explained and illustrated by several very well executed diagrams. Although

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