1891.] NEW YOKE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, 71 



Prof. Allen announced that a new species of thrush had 

 been discovered in Dominica, an island of the Lesser Antilles. 



The following paper was read, entitled 



RECENT WORK IN NORTH AMERICAN MAMMALOGY. 

 BY J. A. ALLEN, PH.D. 



(Abstract.) 



The present review of recent progress in North American 

 mammalogy relates especially to the period since the appearance 

 of Baird's great work on the mammals of North America, pub- 

 lished in 1857, forming Volume VIII. of the Government Re- 

 ports on Explorations and Surveys for a Eailroad Route from 

 the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean, made during the 

 years 1853-56. While that work is taken as the basis of depar- 

 ture, it is of interest to note briefly some of the more important 

 of the earlier works relating to North American mammals. 



A review of the history of North American natural history 

 necessarily begins with Catesby, whose great work, " The Nat- 

 ural History of Carolina, Florida," etc. (two volumes folio), was 

 published in parts from 1730 to 1748, In this were figured and 

 described for the first time a number of our mammals, 



Pennant^s "Arctic Zoology^' (three volumes quarto, 1784-87) 

 includes notices of many North American species. 



Besides numerous more or less important incidental contribu- 

 tions made by explorers and travellers, and the descriptions of 

 new species based on specimens collected by Lewis and Clarke 

 in the years 1804-6, and by Major Long in 1819-20, and by va- 

 rious arctic explorers, as Sabine, Scoresby, and Richardson, there 

 is little to note till we reach the year 1825, when Richard Harlan 

 published his "Fauna Americana," an octavo volume of about 

 300 pages, devoted exclusively to North American mammals. It 

 is now mainly of interest as the first general treatise on the sub- 

 ject, although for its time a creditable production. He described 

 127 species as "inhabiting North America north of Mexico," 

 Of this number 11 were based on the fossil remains of extinct 

 species, reducing the number of living species to 116. 



This work was soon followed by a much more extended and 

 elaborate general treatise by John D, Godman, published un- 

 der the title "American Natural History: Part I., Mastology,"' 

 an octavo work in three volumes, the first two published in 

 1826, the third in 1838. The work was illustrated with numer- 

 ous plates engraved on copper, giving very good figures of nearly 



