92 



objects contained in the Museum of Natural History, at the Lyceum, New York. 

 This catalogue is drawn up by one of the leading members of that institution, and, 

 as an indication of his competency for the task, we find ten or twelve honorary titles 

 and three or four et cetera s attached to his name. The writer, after giving a list of 

 numerous Buccinums, Venuses, Turbos, vertebra? and teeth of sea-serpents, &c, 

 notices a flint-stone from England containing two Echinites, one of which is "fast 

 in its hole," while the other, mirabile dictu, " can be made to revolve upon its 

 own a.vis /" This remarkable phenomenon appears to have amazingly puzzled 

 the learned compiler of the catalogue, who does not presume to attempt any solu- 

 tion of the problem. 



With regard to the statement respecting the fossil corn, we are by no means 

 disposed to question its authenticity, notwithstanding the apparently anomalous 

 conditions attending its deposition. These, perhaps, may be explained when a 

 more minute investigation has been made of the locality in which this singular 

 stratum has been discovered. The only instance at all analogous to the present, 

 with which we are acquainted, is the prodigious accumulation of fruits and seeds in 

 the London clay of the Isle of Sheppy. It is not at all beyond the limits of pro- 

 bability to imagine that, under some circumstances, the clay might, by aqueous 

 agency, be removed, and a continuous stratum of seeds left. We are, however, 

 unwilling to enlarge upon so novel a fact as that related by Mr. Johnson until we 

 have all the circumstances connected with its history before us. 



In closing the present volume we cannot help expressing the gratification we 

 have derived from its perusal, and the sincere hope that this year will not pass 

 away without the publication of a second. 



A History of British Quadrupeds. By Thomas Bell, F.R.S., F.L.S., Lecturer 

 on Comparative Anatomy at Guy's Hospital. Illustrated by a Wood-cut of 

 each Species, and numerous Vignettes. 8vo. London : Van Voorst. 1836. 



Of all the Vertebrata of the British Islands, the Mammiferous, or Masto- 

 zoary,* animals have been the least frequently and efficiently delineated by the 

 artist. While the birds have been figured with various degrees of ability and suc- 

 cess, by Pennant, Lewin, Donovan, and the lamented Bewick ; and a highly re- 

 spectable work, by Meyer, on British Ornithology, is in active progress ; and our 



*• To the newly-introduced term, Mammal, we have an insuperable objection ; and the 

 hybrid compound, Mammalogy, is not to be, for a moment, tolerated by an educated ear. 

 There is, in fact, no such term in the Greek, as (tuppa, signifying teat or dug : and, even 

 were it so, what would Mammalogy express, but dug-discourse, — not, as it is meant to im- 

 ply, the doctrine of teated or Mammiferous Animals. Maslozoology, although not exactly 

 to our taste, is surely far preferable, as compounded of ij.u.otos, a dug or teat, {juoi, an ani- 

 mal, and x'oyoi, a discourse, to the spurious, unscientific, and unmeaning " Mammalogy" 



