Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 3 (1899).djvu/304

278 and arrive at the Pliocene Pithecanthropus erectus, we feel that we are contemplating an era of which as yet so little is known, and of which so much more must yet be told. The chances against finding organic remains are innumerable; "every item of knowledge acquired may indeed be literally described as owing to a chapter of accidents"; to the palaeontologist the knowledge of the past must often seem to be as carefully guarded as the portals of the future. And yet, with all the "imperfection of the geological record," palæontological interpreters—among whom will always be mentioned Owen and Marsh—have given a knowledge which may without offence be designated as a revelation.

With the fascination incidental to the study of a past era and an unseen fauna, caution is a first and last word, in fact, the alpha and omega of palæontological speculation. Mr. Woodward is careful to explain that, "owing to the imperfection of the geological record and the incomplete exploration of most formations, any statement now formulated may eventually prove to be quite a partial account of the facts, and every conclusion must be more or less provisional and tentative"; while "the known facts of geology are still too few to restore the life-provinces of the globe at the various stages of its past history." This is a good book for the zoological library; it may be, as the author modestly suggests, "an elementary handbook," but at the same time it conveys an indispensable information which by many zoologists is necessarily possessed in a more than elementary manner.

Butterflies and larger Moths of New Zealand have now procured a satisfactory treatment, and by the aid of this fully illustrated work it is possible to form a conception of the interesting but modest lepidopteral fauna of "Te Ika a Maui." In 1855 the missionary Richard Taylor, in his account of the islands, gave us a few coloured figures of the butterflies and moths found there; Butler subsequently figured the Rhopalocera, whilst Meyrick has described and enumerated very many of the Heterocera, so that the time was ripe for a fully illustrated