The Fauna and Geography of the Maldive and Laccadive Archipelagoes

AS the general scope and character of this important work were referred to at some length in a notice of the first part which appeared in NATURE for April 3, 1902 (vol. lxv. p. 514), it will suffice on the present occasion to confine attention to some of the more generally interesting of the numerous memoirs contained in the parts now before us. By generally interesting, we mean reports which deal more especially with questions connected with morphology, development, the limitations of species, reef-formation, &c, rather than those devoted to systematic zoology, and it is on these grounds that we pass over papers like those by Messrs. Borradaile and Lanchester on crustaceans, and the one by Mr. E. Smith on molluscs (important as they are from their special point of view) in favour of some of those of the former type.The Fauna and Geography of the Maldive and Laccadive Archipelagoes.Edited by J. S. Gardiner. Vol. i., parts ii. to iv.; vol. ii., parts i. to iii. (Cambridge: C. J. Clay and Sons, 1902–4.)