REVIEWS OF NEW PUBLICATIONS. 383 



effect of creating a prejudice which precludes all cool investigation, and at once 

 converts the botanical student into a flaming partizan. 



Believe me, 



Yours very troly, 

 Dryadoille Cottage, near Worcester, Edwin Lees. 



May 4, 1838. 



REVIEWS OF NEW PUBLICATIONS. 



The Natural History of Quadrupeds and Whales ; being the Article " Mam- 

 malia," from the Seventh Edition of the " Encyclopaedia Britannica." With above 

 150 illustrations. By James Wilson, F.H.S.E., M.W.S., &c. Edinburgh: A. 

 and C. Black; Simpkin and Co., London; John Cumming, Dublin. 1837. 4to. 

 pp. 120. 



In our last number (p. 332) we reviewed, at some length, Professor Phillips's 

 geological treatise, as republished from the Encyclopcedia Britannica. We here 

 have a reprint of another article from the same valuable work, from the pen of a 

 well-known zoologist. Our retrospect of the volume must be as rapid as the 

 author's review of the animal kingdom, but the work is too excellent and too 

 carefully written to be discharged with a mere passing notice of general com- 

 mendation. 



After furnishing a synopsis of a few of the more important mammalogical 

 systems, our author enters fairly upon his subject, with the arrangement of Cuvieb. 

 In stating (p. 86), as a general characteristic of the Mammalia, that their colour 

 is lighter underneath than above, it is by no means intended to affirm, we 

 presume, that the circumstance is confined to the class, or even to the animal 

 kingdom. The same may be said of the leaves of plants, which are always 

 darkest on the side most fully exposed to the light. Whether the same cause 

 operates in animals to produce a similar effect, must be considered very doubtful. 

 At p. 86 it is stated, that the young of Mammalia are frequently more elegantly 

 attired than adults, which is perfectly true ; but the rule placed in juxta-position, 

 that " the early plumage of birds is always more dingy and obscure than that of 

 adults," is not without its exceptions. The young of some Woodpeckers, for 

 instance, have bright scarlet feathers in parts where the adults are perfectly 

 destitute of them. " Melanism [[black varieties] is more frequent in warm 

 countries, albinism £ white varieties] in cold ones, and the former is much rarer 

 than the latter." Doubtless ; although we have seen whole parks stocked with 

 black Rabbits in England, and have known Coalhoods (or " Bullfinches") and 

 Goldwings (" Goldfinches") turn black in a temperate climate, from feeding too 

 profusely on a heating diet. It seems most probable that the seasonal changes 



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