46 



A Manual of British Vertebrate Animals : or Descriptions of all the Animals 

 belonging to the Classes Mammalia, Aves, Reptilia, Amphibia, and Pisces, 

 which have hitherto been discovered in the British Islands, fyc. By the Rev. 

 Leonard Jenyns, M.A., &c. 8vo., pp. 559. Cambridge. 1835. 



In the literature of British Zoology, the want of a work like the present has 

 long been felt. The Synopsis, of Dr. Berkenhout, complete and excellent for the 

 times in which it appeared, and valuable to those whose hands were destined to 

 receive it, has long been out of print : and the information which, even when 

 attainable, it is found to convey, is rendered uninteresting, and comparatively 

 useless, by the discoveries and the innovations, — if not the improvements, — of 

 zoological science in this inquisitive and aspiring age. Berkenhout, in the last 

 Edition of his Synopsis, enumerated only fifty-four species of British Mammifera, 

 including man : while, in the present work, man, with the domesticated, natu- 

 ralized, extinct, and doubtful species excluded, " the number of described Mamma- 

 lia amounts to sixty-one." And of the Zoophagous Cetacea, — by far the most 

 feebly-executed and unsatisfactory portion of Mr. Jenyns' work,— two or three 

 well-defined species which inhabit the seas, and occasionally visit the coasts, of 

 Britain, are excluded from the catalogue of the Reverend Author. The whole of 

 the British Vertebrated Animals, in fact, described by Berkenhout, amount only 

 to four hundred and seventy-two : while the species of the five Classes, acknow- 

 ledged as British by the Cambridge Zoologist, " when added together, give five 

 hundred and eighty-one as the total number ;" leaving, in favour of the latter, an 

 increase of one hundred and nine newly discriminated, or newly discovered, spe- 

 cies* of British Mammifera. 



Upon the character and execution of the British Fauna, of Dr. Turton, 

 which, with the exception of Pennant's British Zoology, comes next to the Sy- 

 nopsis of Berkenhout in order of time, we are unable to pronounce a judgment : a 

 copy of it is nowhere to be had. The name and attainments of its author will, 

 however, sufficiently vouch for the respectability of the work. But thirty years 

 have now nearly elapsed since it was published ; and the value of literary produc- 

 tions on the Natural Sciences is far more frequently impaired, than left untouched, 

 by the destructive hand of time. The excellencies and defects of the zoological 

 labours of Pennant are too well known to require eulogium or exposure here. As 

 a work exhibiting far more of a popular than a scientific or synoptical character, 

 the British Zoology, indeed, does not legitimately come within the line of our 

 literary retrospect. 



Mam. Aves. Rept. Pisces. Total. 



• Berkenhout 54 245 15 158 472 



Fleming 50 264 11 162 487 



Jenyns 61 297 13 210 581 



