t902i The British Association in Belfast. 309 



the collecting" of colour-varieties of snails or the "obtaining " of casual bird- 

 visitors (whose appearance is often either a meterological or an avicultural 

 phenomenon) were bestowed on some of the important groups that are still 

 wasting their sweetness on the desert air. But to return to our Guide. 

 Want of co-ordination between the compositor and the systematist is 

 responsible for some startling innovations in classification. Thus, accord- 

 ing" to the type adopted for the classes, orders, &c., we find that the 

 Hemiptera, Neuroptera, Orthoptera, and Aptera are not insects, and that 

 the Crustacea are iK)t Arthropods ! We also learn with surprise that 

 Tunicates are fishes ! 



In the case of the two largfe Vertebrate groups — the Birds and Fishes — 

 a complete enumeration of species is gfiven, with a note on the distribution 

 of each, the whole extending" to 31 pag"es. We cannot but think that more 

 useful information might have been conveyed in less space by a different 

 mode of treatment. Though bird life is profoundly influenced by immediate 

 environment, no attempt is made to connect the distribution of the avifauna 

 with the physical features of the district, or to group them according to 

 similarity of habitat. Mr. Ussher's paper " On the distribution of birds 

 breeding in Ireland,"^ and his more recent communication to the British 

 Association (see p. 283), show how profoundly interesting the subject so 

 treated can become even to the general reader. A treatment of these 

 groups by analysis, comparison, and collation with environmental in- 

 fluences, would have been quite in place in the Guide, which aims at 

 laying before the reader something better than lists of species. Messrs. 

 Welch and Orr's article on the Land and Fresh-water MoUusca is an excel- 

 lent example of the kind of treatment we refer to, and is a model of what 

 such an article should be. Looking over the Zoology as a whole, while it 

 shows that our knowledge of certain groups is now on a very satisfactory 

 basis, it appears to us to convey a more useful lesson in bringing clearly 

 forward the enormous extent of the ground that has still to be covered 

 before our knowledge of the fauna can be said to be in any way complete. 



Last comes the chapter devoted to Antiquities, and running to thirty-seven 

 pages. This we have found most disappointing. We had hoped to find 

 some account of the early races of the district as illustrated by the abundant 

 remains which they have left to us. Down and Antrim are famous in this 

 respect, and this district possibly contains the key which will unlock to Us 

 the secrets of the "dim red dawn of man" — of local prehistoric history, if 

 we may use the expression. The evidence supplied by the Neolithic raised 

 beach at Larne, the hut sites of Whitepark Bay and Dundrum, the crannog 

 of Lisnacroghera, is of the very highest importance in elucidating the Later 

 Stone and Bronze Ages. Yet in the 13 pages devoted to pre-historic 

 archaeology, no mention of these early settlements is to be found. The 

 magnificent series of Neolithic stone implements for which the district is 

 famous is likewise not referred to. In these respects the present Guide 

 falls far behind that of 1874. The pre-historic section in the new Guide 

 confines itself to brief notes, profusely illustrated, of monuments — cromleacs, 



' Irish Nattiralist^ VI. 64-73. 1897. 



