1891.] NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 77 



Two orders of our mammals have received very little atten- 

 tion for nearly tiurty years, and in respect to them we are at 

 present entirely at sea as regards the number of species, their 

 relationships, or their correct names. These are the bats, 

 which have not been monographed since 1864, and the moles 

 and shrews, which have not been thoroughly revised since 1857.^ 

 We are happy to say, however, in respect to the fo)mer, that Dr. 

 Harrison Allen has a work in press, under the auspices of the 

 Smithsonian Institution, relating to the bats^, which will give 

 us a new and most welcome point of departure for this group. 

 The outlook regarding the moles and shrews is less encouraging, 

 there being unforiunatelyno similar work under way treatingof 

 these groups from the American standpoint. Some years since, 

 however, Dr. Dobson, of England, undertook a monographic 

 revision of the Insectivora of the world, but the third and hist 

 part, which is to treat of the shrews, has not yet appeared. In 

 1874 this same author published a monograph of the bats of 

 the world, including, of course. North American. This work 

 was a boon to workers in this field, and a great help respecting 

 our own bats, though not altogether satisfactory. 



We have now said all that our limited time will permit con- 

 cerning the progress of North American mammalogy from the 

 bibliographic standpoint ; its progress from the scientific stand- 

 point remains to be considered. 



Prior to the Government explorations which yielded the 

 material on which Baird's work was based, we had only the 

 most superficial knowledge of the mammalogy of North Amer- 

 ica at large, or beyond the more settled parts of the eastern por- 

 tion of the United States. No museum, public or private, had 

 a good series of specimens of even our most common mammals. 

 Species without number had been described, generally in the 

 most imperfect manner, from either single or comparatively 

 few specimens, and the types had been preserved only in rare 

 instances. Almost nothing was known of either seasonal or 

 individual variation, nor was the material extant for the s-tudy 

 of either of these very important phases of the subject. Even 

 Professor Baird, in working up his comparatively abundant 

 material from the West, found himself often baffled in his 

 comparisons by the absence of specimens from the East. Pro- 



' In 1877 Coues published an important preliminary paper on the 

 North American In.«ectivora, entitled "Precursory Notes on American 

 Insectivorous Mammals, with Descriptions of New Species " (Bull. 

 U. S. Geo). Surv., III., 1877, pp. 631-653). He intended to follow this 

 with an elaborate monograph of the group, which, however, unfortu 

 nately was never completed. 



