Page:The Zoologist, 3rd series, vol 2 (1878).djvu/288

264 In his Preface, the author says : —

The whole of this paragraph appears to us to be founded upon a misapprehension, for fewer countries are better known than Norway ; and after perusing carefully the 422 pages of Capt. Clark Kennedy's volume we have failed to discover that he has anything new to tell us about it. On the other hand, a good many pages are devoted to matters which have little or no relation to Norway, but appertain strictly to the regions of which he only crossed the threshold. The description, for instance, of the habits of the White Bear (pp. 252 — 256), and the chase of the Walrus (pp. 257 — 260), taken from Lamont's well-known volumes, might well have been omitted, seeing that neither of these animals came under the author's personal observation, and the long account given of the Eider Duck (pp. 197—206) contains no statement with which ornithologists are not already familiar through the writings of previous authors.

In some cases Capt. Clark Kennedy's identification of the species of animals mentioned is incorrect ; as, for example, at p. 156, where he gives the Beaked Whale, or "Bottle-head," the name Delphinus tursio (or, as he erroneously spells it, tersio), which appertains to the Botlle-nosed Dolphin, the scientific name of the Bottle-head being Hyperoodon rostratus (Chemnitz): nor is it correct to term seals "Cetaceæ" (p. 25.3), nor Cetaceæ "fish" (p. 295).

We must do Capt. Clark Kennedy, however, the justice to say that there are many pages in his work relating to the Natural History of the country visited, which are not only readable but entertaining; and if there is nothing very new in the facts narrated, the author has at least succeeded in imparting an air of novelty by the pleasant manner in which he has dealt with them.