the reproductive organs of the human race, without impairing or checking reproduction. Variation of structure, however great it may be in certain cases in which the organisation has been rendered unusually plastic by long continued domestication utterly fails therefore in the domestic pigeon to represent those structural changes in development on which specific and generic distinctions should be based; notwithstanding the fact, of which it would be impossible to overrate the importance, that the apparent variation in the domestic breeds of the pigeon is generally speaking greater than in the several members of the Columbidæ in the feral state. Hence it has been candidly admitted by Mr. Darwin that whilst, on the one side, there is "perfect or increased fertility" in the several domesticated breeds of the pigeon when inter-crossed; that, on the other side," hardly a single well-ascertained instance is known of hybrids between two true species of pigeons being fertile, inter se, or even when crossed with one of their pure parents." It would, therefore, appear reasonable to conclude that as the variation accumulated under domestication disappears very quickly under the influence of reversion developed by intercrossing, the extinction of intermediate varieties, on which great stress has been laid, and which ought effectually to have secured the isolation of these breeds, should be regarded as a very questionable fact, since there is no interruption or arrest in the backward course or reversion to the ancestral type. For if, in methodical selection, there has been any general extinction of intermediate varieties, the hereditary influence of reversion does not appear to have recognised the occurrence; otherwise, the ancestral form, revealed by crossing, instead of being always that of the wild-rock pigeon, would be frequently, if not usually, a later-formed species; and it would, moreover, be allowable to hope that on some occasions, the reversion, like the occurrence of a supernumerary finger exhibiting piscine affinity in our own race, would extend back not only beyond the C. livia, but beyond also the ancestral form of all the Columbidae to that of the first animal which wore feathers. As there is no such evidence of variation in the reversion of the pigeon, either to an older or to a newer species than the C. livia, but, on the contrary, a steady determination to stop in the backward course only when this particular species, which represents the feral ancestor of all domesticated pigeons, has been revealed, it must consequently be admitted that the five genera, and the 150 distinct breeds of the domestic pigeon, are not entitled to any higher rank than that of brevet species; and that there is, at present, no sufficient evidence to warrant the supposition that time will confirm their promotion, so as to entitle them hereafter to the rank of true species.

PART SECOND.

Bibliographical Record.

ART. I.-The Diseases of the Ear, their Nature, Diagnosis, and Treatment. By JOSEPH TOYNBEE, F.R.S. With a Supplement by JAMES HINTON, M.R.C.S., Aural Surgeon to Guy's Hospital. 8vo. Pp. 466, of which the Supplement occupies 44.

THE care of maintaining this treatise of the late Mr. Toynbee in the high estimation it has acquired, naturally devolves on his friend Mr. Hinton. The author's modes of thought and views on aural surgery were familiar to him, and fall, one might almost say, to his inheritance. He has for some time enjoyed as wide opportunities for independent observations in the same field of study, and has earned for himself a like character for the ardour with which he toils in it. He has presented us with a supplement which runs in the guise of a series of footnotes destined for specified chapters of the original work, and which is so freely drawn from Toynbee's later contributions to the subject, and so much in the same spirit that the volume may be read as the record by one mind of thirty years' experience in the treatment of aural maladies, and of explorations of their causes.

Altogether we have a book redundant in valuable matter, and, we believe, more indispensable to the profession than any other on the same theme. Yet we doubt whether a volume might not be composed from a digest of its contents, and information elsewhere obtainable which might supplant it as a text book. At all events it has one great defect for such purpose: It rather portrays Toynbee's ideas in process of evolution, than incorporates them in the substance of the work; and the notes in the supplement would not always save a docile reader from the imbibition of precepts which are afterwards relinquished as

erroneous.

According to the preface, the "domains of anatomy and physiology have only been entered upon, when requisite, for the elucidation of the pathology or treatment," yet in point of fact the work exhibits the writer as pushing to the front as an original investigator in every division of his subject. He even

invents several aural instruments. However, we cannot esteem him as an equally safe leader in all of these respects. He might justly plume himself on his unrivalled pathological labours and his aptitude for treatment; he advanced our microscopic knowledge of the structure of the membrana tympani; and, though Wollaston had found that the faucial orifice of the Eustachian tube when made to collapse by exhausting the tympanum of some of its air, was opened by swallowing (an observation not alluded to in the book), and Wharton Jones and Hyrtl had described it as habitually weakly collapsed, it was left for him to show that its usual state is closure and not patency, and to trace out the muscles that open it in the act of deglutition. It is in his attempts to gain an insight into the physiological advantages of this arrangement that he fails in success.

In physiological acoustics he is more remarkable for lingering in untenable positions than for conquests. The announcement of his discovery in 1853 was associated with his adoption of the hypothesis that hearing is effected through the fenestra rotunda and the air in the drum, in virtue of the resonant properties of a perfectly-closed chamber. To this fancy he clings even to the middle of the treatise whose preface bears the date of 1860, though he adds as a "second reason" for the closure, "that, as specially pointed out by Dr. Jago, sound may be prevented entering the tympanum from the fauces;" silent as to the facts and arguments with which the latter's paper (published only a few months after his own announcement) was filled, and which were destructive of the theory upheld by himself. However, in the course of the volume he is found to have vanished from the ground he had so long adhered to, and under cover of some acoustic experiments of his own having little new in principle, encamping upon that marked out by Johannes Müller, viz., that the fenestra ovalis and ossicula chiefly conduct sonorous waves to the labyrinth, the other fenestra and air in the drum somewhat helping.

In physiological mechanics he continued to propound as his own observation, that air is forced into the drums through the Eustachian tubes when we swallow with the nostrils closed, although the writer just named had, two years before, called attention to the visible depression of the lachrymal sacs (the alæ of the nose show the same fact) as manifesting that air is, on the contrary, withdrawn. After ten years this correction gains admission to the supplement, where it figures as Politzer's, who merely verifies it by aid of an air-tight "manometer." Thus, there was promise that Dr. Jago's remaining correction, that the opening of the tube is not strictly limited to the act of deglutition, but happens also on the occurrence of eructation, might in due time be allowed.

With similar reluctancy Mr. Toynbee abandons his view that an artificial membrana tympani benefits hearing by converting a drum with a perforate (true) membrane into a closed chamber; being led, he tells us, to do so by witnessing a demonstration by Dr. Julius Erhard, that hearing might be improved by the pressure of cotton wool on an entire membrane, and coming now to the conclusion that it was by restoring con tact occasioned by some disconnection or loss in the ossicular chain. Thus, as the supplement points out, he approached the opinion long held by Mr. Yearsley that the cotton wool supported the ossicula.

In turning to other topics, we may glean from the supplement what has been the presumable progress of aural surgery during the last eight years. In diagnosis we are told that Dr. Von Troeltsh's recommendation of employing a mirror to illumine the meatus and membrane so as to set one's hands at liberty is universally adopted. Dr. Lucae's proposal for distinguishing between affections of the nerve and conducting apparatus is found of service. He tries whether the sound of a tuningfork vibrating on the vortex of the head or forehead grows louder by closing the meatus. However, it is far from new to us that vibrations thus arrested in the meatus are heard through the membrana tympani, and are a test of ordinary hearing power. Siegler's pneumatic speculum for withdrawing air from the meatus whilst the membrane is kept in sight, is said to have great value in determining whether there are bands of adhesion in the drum.

Under "diseases of the meatus," Mr. Hinton gives us an important observation of his own; that, as far as his experience goes, polypi in the meatus invariably spring from the drum, though they may also have attachment to the walls of the meatus; he finds it better to treat the discharges following their removal, as well as most of those from the tympanum, by means of an absorbent powder such as talc, syringing and sending a current of air by Politzer's method through the Eustachian tube and perforated membrane. He adds hints from his own practice on the treatment of boils in the meatus, syphilitic affections of the ear, &c. Also, we have an interesting series of cases from a late paper of Toynbee's on sebaceous tumours in the ear causing death through caries of the petrous bone.

Under Eustachian tube, membrana tympani, tympanum, nervous apparatus, we have :-Politzer's happy method of inflating the drums by a jet of air through a nostril at the instant of swallowing, and a description of his apparatus, Weber's nose-douche, Loewenberg's rhinoscopic observations, not here thought of wide application, though that writer found them useful in syphi

litic and scrofulous cases. Dr. Jago's paper in this Journal on the Functions of the Tympanum being commended to the attention of the reader as "containing much suggestive" physiological "matter;" his "description of the symptoms of patency of the Eustachian tube" is instanced as "deserving a careful study." This is a generous allusion on the part of Mr. Hinton, yet it is surely an oversight that in a special treatise of this sort this complaint should remain undescribed, though it may be so rare that he could only add from his own observation one well marked case to the two from which Dr. Jago derived its characteristics; especially as Toynbee himself had latterly spoken of it as "proved" to be "one of the most unendurable of affections." There follows a lucid exposition of Dr. Jago's theory of the functions of the mucus secreted by the lining membrane of the drum in keeping us unconscious of subjective sounds and perfecting the conducting apparatus. Its pathological groundwork is confirmed from Mr. Hinton's practice, and with qualifications there is a leaning in its favour. Dr. Jago's opinion as to the vascular origin of tinnitus is regarded as putting us in the way of solving the mystery in which this has been involved, whilst Mr. Hinton suggests that it may often arise from pressure on the labyrinth caused by irritable muscles of the drum or otherwise. We are told that among the poorer classes hereditary syphilis frequently destroys hearing, and that this disease at Guy's Hospital furnishes one twentieth of the aural cases, and that "evidently it is the disease, or one of the diseases, which Sir W. Wilde described as affecting the ears in early life, subsequently to, or alternating with, an inflammatory affection of the eyes."

ART. II-A Report on Amputations at the Hip-joint, in Military Surgery. Circular No. 7. War Department, SurgeonGeneral's Office. Washington, July 1, 1867. 4to. Pp. 87. With 9 lithographic plates and 30 woodcuts. A Contribution to the History of the Hip-joint Operations performed during the late Civil War, being the Statistics of Twenty Cases of Amputation and Thirteen of Resections at this Articulation in the Southern Service By PAUL F. EVE, M.D., Professor of Surgery in the University of Nashville, Tenn. Philadelphia, 1867. Pp. 17.

WE have had occasion before to call our readers' attention to the interesting and valuable documents relating to the medical and surgical history of the late civil war which have been issued from the Surgeon-General's office at Washington; 'A Vindication of the Present State of Aural Surgery,' p. 12, 1864.