Abstract
(1) ONE of the many ways of beginning the study of zoology is to take a survey of the whole animal kingdom, working from the simple to the complex, never going very deeply into anything, but using now this, now that, to illustrate a principle. That is what Prof. Brucker has done, and it is a feat to have done it so clearly and in such simple language. If the reader, young or old, is able to touch and handle, as well as read about, even a tenth of the creatures discussed, he will have got far across the threshold of the science—to use the phrase which gives its name to this new series. To our thinking there is far too much in the book for an introduction, but that is largely a matter of opinion, and it is doubtless what students say of most courses of elementary instruction which their professors after much thought on the subject decide to deliver. Be this as it may, the author of this little book is evidently an experienced teacher, and he has been successful in working out the method he has adopted. His avoidance of the unnecessarily technical is most praiseworthy, even if it leads to difficulties of its own, such as that one, more or less happily circumvented, that the squids are “molluscs with the foot surrounding the head.” That is rather a stiff one on the threshold!
(1) Zoology.
By Prof. E. Brucker. Pp. xiii + 219. (London: Constable and Co., Ltd., 1913.) Price 2s. net.
(2) Some Secrets of Nature.
Short Studies in Field and Wood. With an introduction by W. J. P. Burton. Pp. xiv + 144 + plates. (London: Methuen and Co., Ltd., n.d.) Price 1s. 6d.
(3) The Romance of Nature.
Studies of the Earth and its Life. With a preface by the Rev. A. Thornley. Pp. xix + 164 + x plates. (London: Methuen and Co., Ltd., n.d.) Price 2s.
(4) In the Lap of the Lammermoors.
By W. McConachie. Pp. xii + 315. (Edinburgh and London: William Black wood and Sons, 1913.) Price 5s. net.
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THOMSON, J. (1) Zoology (2) Some Secrets of Nature (3) The Romance of Nature (4) In the Lap of the Lammermoors . Nature 92, 340–341 (1913). https://doi.org/10.1038/092340a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/092340a0