A Treatise on Zoology

Abstract

IT is a new thing for a whole volume of a zoological treatise to be devoted to the two phyla, Platyhelmia (Turbellaria, liver-flukes and tapeworms) and the Nemertea (long sea-worms), which Prof. Benham describes in the work before us. For a number of reasons they are not popular groups of animals. The free-living forms are delicate and their very identification is attended with considerable difficulty, and needs mechanical skill and anatomical knowledge. The parasitic forms add gruesome associations to these troubles, so that it is only the unfortunate patient, the doctor and the scientific agriculturist who have in any sense a working acquaintance with flukes and tapeworms. Very few zoologists know much about them except in such places as Italy, parts of Germany and Egypt, where their unpleasantly common occurrence has created the necessity for a thorough investigation of the modes of infection and of the methods for obtaining immunity from their attacks. Hence it is that in most text-books these phyla have not been given that serious and thorough attention which is afforded them in Prof, Ray Lankester's “Treatise of Zoology.” We have here a compact, lucid and scholarly summary of the anatomy, life-histories and classification of the parasitic flatworms.

A Treatise on Zoology.

Edited by E. Ray Lankester Part IV. "The Platyhelmia, Mesozoa and Nemertini." By Prof. W. Blaxland Benham, M.A., University of Otago, New Zealand. Pp. iv + 204. (London: A. and C. Black.) Cloth, 15s. net; paper covers, 12s. 6d. net.