Hydroids of the Pacific Coast of Canada and the United States

Abstract

TO open this book is to be at once reminded of Hincks' “Hydroid Zoophytes”, now seventy years old, or of Dr. George Johnston's book of a generation before, both of them beloved by innumer able naturalists. Here, in like manner, Prof. McLean Fraser has produced, in handy form and copiously illustrated, an account of the rich hydroid fauna of the Pacific Coast, from California all the way to Bering Sea. We are struck, at first sight, by the curious likeness of this fauna to the British fauna; many species are identical, such as Linnseus's Obelia geniculata and Sertularella polysonias, or Ellis and Solander's Halecium muricatum. Others, not so familiar as these, such as the various species of Selaginopsis, carry an Arctic fauna round the world from the Murman Coast and the Siberian Sea. But there are not wanting many others, strange to our European seas. The book is an interesting one to the naturalist at home, and will become an indispensable one to the many naturalists out west by the Pacific.

Hydroids of the Pacific Coast of Canada and the United States

C. McLean

Fraser

By. Pp. 208 + 44 plates. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1937). 2.50 dollars.