66 The Irish Nahiralist. 



whicli is evident on almost all page.s of his volume, and which 

 could hardly have been expected to have been absent from a 

 work which appears to have been projected onl}^ about a year 

 ago. 



In the present notice we propose to confine ourselves for 

 the most part to that part of the book which refers to mam- 

 mals found in Ireland, and, even then, w^ant of space will 

 hardly permit us to notice all the omissions. 



We cannot compliment the publishers on the thirty-two 

 plates. In our opinion Mr. lyydekker's book would have been 

 much improved had they bee;i left out. These may have 

 been good for the time w^hen the first edition of the Natura- 

 lists' Library was published, but in these daj^s readers expect 

 something more for their money than plates like No. 2 (the 

 Long-eared Bat), which even the author is compelled to de- 

 scribe as *' not quite true to nature." But if the plates are 

 bad, the figures of the skulls are worse ; some of them indeed 

 are hardly recognizable as skulls at all, w^ere it not that we 

 are told so in the letter-press. That of the skull of the 

 Squirrel on page 16S is almost the worst of a bad lot. 



The best parts of the book are the chapters on the ancient 

 mammals of Britain, and the introduction, which are pleasantly 

 written, but even these are by no means perfect. 



In the introduction (pp. 1-13) Mr. Lydekker discusses the 

 origin of the British mammalian fauna. The British Islands 

 come under the category of Dr. A. R. Wallace's " Continental " 

 Islands, that is to say they were lands which have evidently 

 been united with the neighbouring Continent of Europe at no 

 ver}^ remote epoch, to wdiich fact the general similarity of the 

 fauna and flora and of the geological formations, the shallow- 

 ness of the intervening seas, and the absence of peculiar 

 mammals testify. Among the proofs which exist that these 

 islands formerly stood at a much higher elevation than at 

 present is the case, not the least remarkable are the submerged 

 forests which occur on several parts of the coast of Great 

 Britain, in addition to which the author might have mentioned 

 many which occur in Ireland, such as that on the coast of 

 the Barony of Forth in the Count}' of Wexford. 



Mr. Lydekker credits Britain with forty-seven species of 

 terrestrial mammals (including several doubtful species), which 

 have been known to have inhabited the British Islands during 



