NOTES 143 



sent to him .it the British Museum in order that he might there 

 work them out under the most favourable conditions, since the 

 larger collections and libraries in London not only greatly 

 reduced his labours, but materially enhanced their value. 

 Working, as was his wont, with extraordinary speed, by 1887 

 he had completed a fine series of volumes on these remains. 

 But more than this, between 1885-87 he had prepared catalogues 

 of the fossil mammals in the British Museum, followed, between 

 1888-91, by catalogues on the fossil reptiles and amphibia, and 

 birds. 



But besides his work on extinct types, of which no more 

 than a bare mention is possible here, he was responsible for a 

 series of volumes on Big Game Animals, on which he spent an 

 immense amount of hard work. He also wrote three extremely 

 valuable books on The Horse and his Relatives, The Sheep and its 

 Cousins, and The Ox and its Kindred. He was joint author with 

 the late Sir William Flower of a book on mammals which has 

 become a classic, and he contributed almost all that is to be found 

 on mammals in the Encyclopaedia Britannica. 



One of the most valuable of his contributions to zoological 

 literature was his volume on the Geographical History of 

 Mammals written for the Cambridge Geographical Series. To 

 this task he brought an unrivalled knowledge, and he marshalled 

 his facts with consummate skill. The great merit of this work 

 lies in the fact that it embraced both living and extinct types, 

 and disclosed a peculiarly keen insight into the problems bearing 

 on the distribution of land and water in past times, a factor of 

 paramount importance in all matters concerning the theme of 

 distribution. 



Of no less value to Science were his periodical summaries of 

 zoological work which he contributed to the pages of Science 

 Progress, 1 and the constant stream of notes on new species 

 which appeared in the Proceedings of the Zoological Society 

 and the columns of the Field. 



Over and above his contributions to Science Mr. Lydekker 

 accomplished more perhaps than any man of his time for the 

 popularisation of natural history. During a long series of years 

 he contributed to every venture which catered for the amateur 

 naturalist, and his most notable achievement in this direction 



1 Yearly accounts of progress in Vertebrate Palaeontology, in the January or 

 April numbers from 1908 to 191 5 inclusive. 



