the Myxosporidiida are a deadly scourge to fish and silkworms. Then again their relation to the problem as to whether plants and animals in primitive forms are capable of demarcation is a most important one, for, as Dr. Calkins points out, Buffon wrote as early as 1749: "We are led to conclude that there is no absolute and essential distinction between the animal and vegetable kingdoms."[1]
We might further digress on the many interests attached to the Protozoa. What are the bionomics of these living unicellular structures; and has not immortality been ascribed to their method of reproduction by simple division? But we will refer all enquirers to the book itself. It is a volume which describes what to most people is an unknown life in an unseen world, and is another instance of the good work now being done in America.
The second volume of this excellent monograph has appeared, and possesses a somewhat melancholy interest. Dr. Stark, the original author, and whose portrait is given as a frontispiece, was slain by a Boer shell during the siege of Ladysmith. The manuscript that was left behind by the deceased ornithologist has been placed in the hands of the Director of the South African Museum, who, with necessary revision and additions, has produced this volume, and will, we are glad to learn, bring the work to a conclusion in two final volumes.
The present publication continues the description of the Passeres, commencing with the Laniidæ, and concluding with the Pittidæ. It thus includes the Warblers, a group which in the Transvaal the writer of this notice found was very imperfectly known, and probably insufficiently collected. These birds only attract the attention of the earnest ornithologist, and as a rule
- ↑ This view must have had considerable vogue in France, and is probably the derivation of the remark lately attributed by Lord Rosebery to Napoleon—"The plant is the first link in a chain of which man is the last" ('Napoleon, the Last Phase,' p. 170).
