Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 2 (1898).djvu/166

134 resemblance, a humidity well marked, and yet possess totally dissimilar faunas. Moreover, Great Britain has a fauna almost common to the adjacent European continent; whilst that of New Zealand differs from the neighbouring Australian to a greater extent than obtains in the faunistic relationship of England and Japan. This may be trite information, but it cannot be too sufficiently emphasized.

The "Philosophy of Zoology" is treated in a temperate and judicial manner; whilst the true principles of Evolution and its methods as expressed by "Natural Selection" with its handmaid Mimicry, &c, are clearly acknowledged. But it is well observed: "The generalisations forming the subject-matter of the philosophy of zoology may, in some instances, be so clearly and directly deducible from the data concerned, that it is scarcely possible for anyone conversant with the facts to refuse credence to the generalisation. But in other cases the conclusion is a matter of probability only, and one conclusion or another may be regarded as the more probable, according to the estimate formed of the relative importance to be attached to different sets of the facts or to different aspects of the facts."

The "History of Zoology" is necessarily a compressed digest, but we are glad to see that our countryman John Ray is recognised as the first to grasp the specific generalisation, though his imperfect efforts were afterwards developed and perfected by Linnaeus.

We will conclude this notice with the last words of our authors. "Nothing is more certain than if the new 'Natural History'" (the study of living animals under natural conditions) "is to be superior to the old—more scientific, more concerned with the solution of general problems—it can only be by utilising to the full all that has been learnt in the laboratory in the departments of anatomy, physiology, and embryology."

are certain subjects about which everyone knows a little, which possess local specialists, but which have never been treated in an universal manner. Historians are familiar