NEW BOOKS ON INDIAN ZOOLOGY. 181 



it is the only book of the lot, as yet, that has its price plainly 

 marked on it ; secondly, it is the only one which has not been 

 subjected to what the Editor euphemistically calls " compression." 

 We should prefer to call it desiccation. In a case of this sort, it is 

 better to be the compressor than the compressed. At any rate, we 

 have here a complete list of the Mammals of India, so far as the 

 half volume and the author go, and probably no man alive could have 

 done it better. 



The style, compared to that of the early Victorians, is undignified 

 and meagre, but it is alive in its way, and we know now what a 

 most competent authority — probably the most competent — thinks 

 about so many of our beasts as he has yet found time to give us 

 his mind about. The book is really a book, and not a catalogue 

 of flat skins ; and the sooner we have the rest the better. "We shall 

 then lay our old well-pencilled volumes of Jerdon's " Mammals of 

 India" aside (with a sigh no doubt), but aside for all that. 



Perhaps the point most interesting to sportsmen in this half 

 volume is that Mr. Blanford finally disposes of the distinction 

 between " leopard " and " panther." Many — the present writer 

 amongst them — had long clung to the idea that these were two, but 

 it seems impossible not to admit the force of Mr. Blanford's argu- 

 ments for their identity; and our own collection of skulls bears the 

 same way. The very puzzling Indian Otters are here for the first 

 time reduced to intelligible order, and the mysterious " Mumh " of 

 Beluchistan becomes a commonplace black bear, which we are to 

 call Ursm torquatus instead of Thibetanus as hitherto, because 

 although found on the Himalayas and even in China, it does not 

 appear to have been recorded from Thibet. 



Information about the Hedgehogs is evidently much wanted ; 

 Mr. Blanford seems a little at sea about their distribution, and is 

 clearly unaware that they are common in the north of British 

 Gujarat. There seem to be two species, probably Erinaceus pictus 

 and E. Jerdonia. 



One curious correction our own records enable us to make, — for 

 Mr. Sterndale has here recorded that the White-browed Gibbon 

 does not " drink with its lips putting its head down to the water, 

 but dips its hand in the water and then licks the back of it." This is 



