17 MARCH 1877, Page 23

Zoology for Students. By O. Carter Blake, D.S. (Daldy, Isbister,

and Co.)—This handbook treats principally of the comparative anatomy of the different genera and species, and a student would derive ne profit from it who is not tolerably well acquainted with anatomy. On this account it is, perhaps, best fitted for medical students, or those who have gone through a special course of human physiology. They will then find this a useful guide for minute and accurate descriptions of the structure not only of those animals which are still extant, but also of the more important of the extinct. We cannot, however, speak with the same satisfaction of the plan of the work, which commences with the highest vertebrates and goes down to the protozoa, and ignores the hypothesis of descent. What should we say of a handbook on chemistry which omitted all mention of the atomic theory ; and why, we ask, should the genus homo be divided into the species Homo sapiens and Homo Afer, as though these were two typea which really included the whole of mankind, to say nothing of the invidious distinctions be- tween sapiens and Afer? Why one more sapiens than the other?