Page:Natural History Review (1862).djvu/20

Rh of a moderately intelligent and affectionate dog with a human infant before it has acquired speech, must abundantly convince any unprejudiced person, that the same moral and intellectual faculties are working in both; that in whatever sense the child can be said to possess reason, or to be capable of right and wrong, his four-footed playmate has a claim to a humbler share of the same distinctions. However, on this point, the words of a writer, with whom we have not always the good fortune to find ourselves in such entire agreement, so amply express our convictions, and, if true, are so entirely subversive of the proposition to establish a "Règne humain," that we may fitly conclude this article with them:—

"Not being able to appreciate, or conceive of, the distinction between the psychical phenomena of a Chimpanzee and of a Boechisman, or of an Aztec, with arrested brain growth, as being of a nature so essential as to preclude a comparison between them, or at being other than a difference of degree, I cannot shut my eyes to the significance of that all-pervading similitude of structure—every tooth, every bone strictly homologous—which makes the determination of the difference between Homo and Pithecus the anatomist's difficulty."

paper, which has been recently read by Dr. Fitzinger, before the Academy of Sciences at Vienna, and is printed in their "Sitzungsberichte," (Vol. XLII.) gives a resumé of the collections made by the two Zoologists (Messrs. Zelebor and v. Frauenfield) attached to the Novara expedition, in the classes of Mammals and Reptiles. The determination of the species in these sections of the Vertebrates, has been assigned to Dr. Fitzinger and Herr Zelebor; the investigation of the Fishes is stated to have been entrusted to Professor Kner; and Herr von Pelzeln, we believe, has been for some time past engaged in working out the series of Birds.

Of Mammals 440 individual specimens were collected during the expedition, belonging to 176 different species, of which a list, containing the names without descriptions and localities, is appended. Among these are 11 considered to be hitherto undescribed, namely, seven Bats, three Rodents and one Armadillo, Of these 11 species, no less than six are from the Nicobar Islands—one of the most novel and interesting localities visited by the expedition. Our previous