18 THE NATURAL HISTORY REVIEW. 



In conclusion, we venture to make the impertinent suggestion 

 to the Lords of Her Majesty's Admiralty that the crew of one 

 of the vessels of war on the Pacific Station might be very usefully 

 employed in visiting Bering's Island, and obtaining for our National 

 Collection a skeleton of this very singular mammal. At present we 

 have not a fragment of it in this country, except two ribs purchased 

 by the British Museum some two years since from St. Petersburg. 

 A cruise up to Bering's Island in the summer montbs, and a little 

 digging would involve neither hardship nor risk to the vessel selected 

 for this service, and might be the means of mucb increasing our 

 knowledge of this curious animal. 



III. — G-unthee's Catalogue of Fishes. 



Catalogue op the Pishes ik the British Museum. By Albert 

 Gunther, M.A., M.D., Ph.D., &c. 5 vols. London : 1859-64. 



Half a century ago our National Collection of Zoology was one 

 of the most indifferent of the larger Museums of Europe, and cer- 

 tainly not to be compared either in value or in extent with the sister 

 institutions of Paris, Ley den, Berlin, or Vienna. Now-a-days, 

 thanks to the untiring zeal of the naturalist, who has so long 

 presided over this department of the British Museum, it has become, 

 taken altogether, the largest in existence, although as regards par- 



whatever of the necessity of ascribing to it seve7i, and certainly the figures and 

 description in Nordmann's paper show distinctly that the anterior part of the head 

 of the first rib is received into an articular fossa on the posterior edge of the body 

 of the seventh vertebra, as in the mammalia generally, proving without any 

 doubt that this is the last cervical and not the first dorsal vertebra. Brandt's 

 description is therefore perfectly coiTect, and Nordmann is in error on this point. 



It is rather surprising that the circumstance of the broad tubercle of the first 

 rib being brought by the excessive antero-posterior compression of the neck 

 bones into relation wilh the hinder edge of the transverse process of the seventh 

 vertebra, should have caused Nordmann to have overlooked the far more important 

 relation of its head to the bodies of the vertebrae. 



Since tlic publication of the note above referred to, we are informed by Mr. Flower, 

 that the skeleton of a West African Manatee {3Ianatus senerjalensis) has been received 

 at the Royal College of Surgeons, with the cervical vertebrje still united by their 

 ligaments. There are certainly not more than six of them; so that it may 

 now be affirmed with perfect confidence that the noimal number of the cervical 

 vertebra in the genera Halicorc and RhijHna is seA'en, and in 3Tanatus only six. 



