Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 5 (1901).djvu/101

Rh finality. Its vicissitudes represent the phases of current opinion. We may change names to-day, and posterity will probably religiously restore them. Even the binomial nomenclature of Linnaeus only exists because we cannot at present imagine a better procedure—and this is the highest praise that can be given to any system or proposition.

This volume, however, represents much more than a discussion on nomenclature or a taxonomical digression. It is the descriptive history to date of a portion of the two-winged flies (Diptera) found in Britain, the general knowledge of which, it may be said, will date from the time of this publication. It is a work which is written in a calm, judicial spirit, and leaves the problems of evolution alone; it describes the insects as they are, and does not discuss the question why they should be so. Perhaps we need not regret this course, for to-day there seem more writers on the last subject than there are who can describe present appearances. A portrait of Meigen is supplied as a frontispiece to this welcome addition to the publications on the Zoology of our own country.

is the second volume of the series devoted to the Fauna of South Africa; the first, relating to Birds, was noticed in the 'Zoologist' for 1900.

The mammals of this region, especially those belonging to the order Ungulata, are sufficient to inspire the pen of any naturalist; no area ever possessed more rich and wonderful herds of game than those which once roamed over its plains, now alas! sadly diminished in numbers, with its erstwhile Blaaubok and Quagga reported as absolutely extinct. We have only to read the narratives of the old travellers—Mr. Sclater has prefaced his volume with an excellent bibliography—and to compare their accounts of mammalian life with its diminished aspect to-day, to realise how man is after all the most destructive animal on the planet. But in South Africa it is not the sportsman so much as the trader who hath wrought this havoc, though it is often difficult to separate the one from the other.