Page:The Zoologist, 3rd series, vol 2 (1878).djvu/485

Rh hoped that his taste for obsorving and his zeal in faithfully recording his observations may be emulated by others who — favourably situated like himself — have it in their power to afld materially to our knowledge of the zoological and botanical wealth of our Indian Empire.

We regret that we cannot congratulate Mr. Lockwood on his illus- trations, most of which are crude and unfinished, and we miss an Index, which would have added much to the utility of his book.

history of Glanville's Wootton, as related by Mr. Dale, occupies barely six and twenty pages. From this circumstance one is led to infer that the account must either be very imperfect or it was hardly worth publication. Nor do the 366 pages which follow on the Zoology and Botany of the parish compensate for the earlier shortcomings of the author. Nearly three hundred pages are occupied with a systematic list of insects, of which only the scientific names are given, and these not always correctly, with no further comment or observation than is conveyed by the addition of the words "common," "abundant," or "very rare," as the case may be. So wearisome a repetition of names can scarcely prove attractive, we imagine, to any but the keenest insect collector. Whether entomologists will be content to accept Mr. Dale's new species (pp. 264, 290, 293, 304, 306, 308), founded as they appear to be on very inadequate descriptions, and having little but his new names to distinguish them, is more than doubtful.

The more important constituents of this local fauna — the Ver- tebrata — being treated in a very cursory and imperfect manner, the work can scarcely be said to have much utility for zoologists. The few scraps of interest which it contains may be noted in a few lines. The Marten-cat has been killed at Holnest (p. 27), Dau- benton's Bat, or the "Little Black Bat," as it is locally termed, is abundant (p. 28). The Roe-deer is stated (p. 29) to be " rare, but more common in the Middlemarsh Woods. It used formerly to be hunted with Greyhounds." These, it is presumed, must be some of the descendants of the stock turned out, in 1800, by the Earl of Dorchester at Milton Abbey, or by his neighbour,