S5^ Analysis of Scientific Books and Memoirs, 



chiefly arranged on the Linnsean model. In the present work, however, the 

 author classes the British animals according to a niethotl of his own. This 

 method, which seems to have heen suggested to hhn by the tables of Ray, he 

 terms the DichoiomouSy or binary arrangement, the principles of which 

 are detailed in a former work, the Philosophy of Zoology. The quinary 

 and circular arrangement proposed by Mr Macleay, and illustrated by 

 Mr Vigors in the class of birds, Dr Fleming conceives " to have origi- 

 nated in metaphysical prejudices," without suspecting that the same ob- 

 jection may be made to his own binary or any other numerical combination. 

 With regard to both, to use the Doctor's own words, " in the various organs 

 and their numerous modifications, belonging to each species, there are 

 characters which enable the physiologist to trace resemblances in struc- 

 ture and function with the organs of many other species ; so that the same 

 animal may occupy a place in many different physiological groups." 



We observe, besides, that Dr Fleming docs not give, as is. the usual 

 custom, in addition to his generic terms, the names of the authors who 

 first instituted or used them. Different writers have applied the same 

 generic name so variously, according to their peculiar views, that without 

 this indication it is impossible, amidst their conflicting arrangements, to 

 ascertain the identity of an individual species; and in Dr Fleming's work, 

 which has added not a few to the number, even the divisions instituted by 

 himself are left to be discovered by the previous knowledge or sagacity of 

 the reader. 



But, waiving altogether these considerations, Dr Fleming, from the ta- 

 lent and industry he has brought to the task, leaves far behind all his pre- 

 decessors in the walk of British Zoology. We have received his work too 

 late to be able to state, by comparison with former writers, the new species 

 he has added to the British Fauna, and the corrections he has made on 

 the statements of his predecessors. " He has long (as he states in his 

 preface) been a practical observer of British Animals, or what a friend of 

 the Honourable Daines Barrington used to term an out-door naturalist. 

 This circumstance has enabled him to correct the specific characters of se- 

 veral animals, and to point out with greater accuracy their habits and dis- 

 tribution, to suppress several spurious species, and to give to the syno- 

 nymes, in many cases, a greater degree of precision." Besides this, and 

 which no previous writer on British Animals has attempted in the same 

 degree, the extirpated and extinct species have been enumerated with a 

 precision of detail, which leaves little to be desired in this most important 

 part of the work. The following are the heads under which the species 

 are classed. 



" The resident animals are such as can accommodate themselves to all the 

 changes of this variable climate. They are the only species which strictly 

 merit the epithet indigenous. 



" The periodical visitants chiefly belong to the class of Birds. Some of 

 these come from more southern latitudes, to spend the summer and bring 

 forth their young ; while others arrive from more northern latitudes, to 

 escape the rigours of an arctic winter. The vernal shifting, the author 

 has denominated Equatorial Migration, the autumnal shifting the Polar 



