39° 



NATURAL SCIENCE. December. 



respect forms a marked contrast with that of the serow on page 219. 

 We should also like to ask why the figure of the eland's head is 



lettered : — 



" Eland (Oreas canna) 

 Eland [Oreas derhianus)." 



Surely it belongs to one or other of those two well-defined species, 

 and is not a " composite portrait." 



Such criticisms as we have made will be seen to refer to unim- 

 portant points of detail. And we have much pleasure in congratulating 

 Mr. Rowland Ward on the production of a work which must be 

 invaluable to every hunter of Big Game, and which is a monument 

 of untiring and successful energy on the part of its author. 



R. L. 



Voles and Lemmings. 



Genera and Sub-genera of Voles and Lemmings. By Gerrit S. Miller. No. 12 of 

 the North American Fauna Series. 8vo. Pp. 1-76, with 3 plates and many 

 text-figures. Published by the United States Department of Agriculture, 

 Washington, 1896. 



No want perhaps has been more felt of recent years by mammalogists 

 and writers on geographical distribution, than a careful and critical 

 comparison between the mammals of Boreal North America and 

 those of our Palsearctic Region. And such a comparison has been 

 nowhere more needed than with the members of the sub-family 

 Microtinae, the Voles and Lemmings, a group highly characteristic 

 of — indeed almost confined to — -these two parts of the world, and one in 

 which, while the Old and New World species were each by themselves 

 as much confused as they well could be, no serious comparison at all 

 had ever been instituted between the corresponding forms of the two 

 sides of the Atlantic. 



Such a comparison combined with a revision of the whole group, 

 Mr. Miller has now made, in the only way in which it was possible, 

 namely, by crossing the Atlantic and working out the European forms 

 in a European Museum, after having previously gained a thorough 

 knowledge of the American ones. We are pleatsed to note that Mr. 

 Miller says our National Museum offers exceptional facilities for such 

 a study, and we hope that he, and others, will make again such an 

 admirable use of these facilities as he has done in the paper before us. 



The astonishing confusion that has hitherto existed in the 

 nomenclature and arrangement of the group may be partly gauged by 

 the fact that for the twenty genera and sub-genera he recognises, 

 Mr. Miller has had to discuss the claims to adoption of more than 

 fifty names, while half a dozen widely different systems of classification 

 have had to be discussed and — dismissed. 



The results as a whole seem to be excellent, and this could hardly 

 fail to be the case from the happy combination of abundant material, 

 common-sense, care, and exhaustiveness, with which we know the 

 work to have been done, and we have therefore practically no criticisms 

 to make. Moreover, owing to the fact that the author does not 

 attempt to deal with species, we are not confronted with that crowd 

 of new names which, whether sound or not, appal the old-fashioned 

 naturaUst in most modern American work. 



As usual in the series, the illustrations are numerous, clear, and 

 admirably adapted to their purpose, and will help students to realise 

 the characters of many rare forms, of which specimens are not 

 available on this side of the world. O. T. . 



