Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 1 (1897).djvu/204

176 one; his tail, however, was of so enormous a length, that he at first took it for a flock of small birds flying after him; he, who is a grave-thinking man, and is not at all given to telling wonderful stories, says he judged it to be yards in length."

The ethnological information is most valuable, and supplements the observations of Cook and Forster. It seems inseparable to some expeditions that native life must be sacrificed, but it is not condoned in these pages; in fact, we are inclined to take leave of Banks by quoting some reflections that bespeak the nature of his mind and heart. Some New Zealand natives had been killed, and his journal for that day concludes:—"Thus ended the most disagreeable day my life has yet seen; black be the mark for it, and heaven send that such may never return to embitter future reflection." The portraits of Banks and Solander, in the possession of the Royal and Linnean Societies, are admirably produced by photography in this volume.

the ordinary traveller to a foreign land seeks a guidebook, or attempts by reading to obtain some idea of the salient features of the country he is about to visit, how much more necessary is it for the untrained zoologist to obtain at least a little information as to the animal life with which he hopes to become familiar. This, in a condensed form, is not at all common literature, and perhaps Tennent's 'Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon' is a type of the book to which we refer, an introduction not a monograph; a general sketch of a fauna from which may be gathered its principal peculiarities, and a glimpse obtained of what may be expected to accrue in one's own special studies and pursuits. Such an inception has apparently guided Mr. Aflalo to his task, and he has succeeded in producing a primer to the Zoology of Australia.

And what a wonderful fauna it is! As Wallace has well remarked, "Australia stands alone." It is not more remarkable in the marsupials it so abundantly possesses, than equally distinguished by its complete poverty in many well-known forms.