Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 1 (1897).djvu/307

Rh species are distinctly different. From his own experience, as director of the Zoological Gardens at Vienna, he is able to state, and from his own examination, that many birds, such as the Cassowary, Turkey, Peacock, Guinea-fowl, Pheasant, Californian Quail, "have specifically different eggs." He therefore comes to the conclusion that "the substances which produce these specific odours and tastes have not been acquired by the animal during its embryological development, but that they form an important constituent of the germ-plasma itself."

Our limits will not allow of more reference to other essays or more quotations from the same, but they all have the merit of raising fresh thought-concepts, even when not securing the reader's conviction on their main thesis; they at least quicken when they do not convince, and are a valuable addition to the ever increasing literature on speculative zoology.

third and enlarged edition of this book will be welcomed alike by the naturalist and the sportsman, both at home and in our colonies, for the Pheasant, though an introduced bird by, or anterior to, the Romans, is still by most Britons cherished almost as a visible sign of a British institution. The name is always familiar; even in South Africa it is applied to species of Pternistes and Francolinus, and there are now more or less successful attempts at introducing the real bird in that much-talked-about region. Mr. Tegetmeier's volume should in our colonies be widely known and read, for it contains the information that is absolutely requisite to enable the bird to become established in those outlying estates of the Greater Britain. It is but a few years back that even in the Transvaal a wealthy Boer asked the present writer for advice on the subject, and stated his intention to procure birds from Holland. The present volume was the very one to have been placed in his hands, and might have inculcated also a better love for things British. We linger on this point, because the book is already so well known