388 NOTES AND COMMENTS [DECEMBER 
British Mammals. 
THE mammals in Britain are so few compared with other components 
of our fauna, that one naturally expects great accuracy in the descriptions 
which experts furnish. There may be better things than great accuracy, 
but it is at least a preliminary essential, and it is by no means always 
realised even in regard to British mammals. Which is disappointing. 
Without ourselves claiming any infallibility we may illustrate our 
disappointment—made keener by our gratitude—by referring to a well- 
known handbook which seems to us to require a second edition. The 
author says that the common squirrel has a head and body about 84 
inches in length, but every squirrel-catcher knows that a full-grown 
squirrel has a head and body about 10 inches in length. The picture 
given of the common (?) squirrel shows an animal with a tail longer 
than the head and body! 
Of Mus sylvaticus the author says that it has a head and body about 
44 in. long; the fraction suggests great accuracy, but a full-grown 
specimen in Elginshire often has a head and body 44 in. long. Of 
Mus flavicollis it is said “head and body 4% in. long,” while of the field 
vole it is stated “length of head and body about 34 to 44 in. long,” 
which surely suggests that field voles vary greatly in size, while field 
mice do not. Which is not the case. It is possible that the alleged 
species Mus flavicollis may be distinct from smaller varieties of the 
wood-mouse found in England, but in Scotland there are abundant 
intermediate forms, some of them as “large and handsome” as Mus 
flavicollis. 
We may be making some mistake, but we are puzzled elsewhere, 
as when the author says “ with the exception of the mouse-coloured bat, 
the Noctule is the largest of the British members of the order,’ and 
gives the length of its head and body as about 3 inches. But he 
states the length of the head and body of the mouse-coloured bat at 
24 inches. 
The author gives twenty-six pairs of teeth as the maximum in the 
common porpoise, but a male’s skull in our possession has thirty pairs 
in the upper jaw. Of Sowerby’s whale the author says “ general colour 
white above and black beneath,” but he must have seen the beast belly 
uppermost, for, when white is present, it is beneath, not above. The 
adults of both sexes which we have seen in the flesh had no white 
whatever, not even “white vermicular streaks.” It is remarkable that 
one very distinct species of Cetacean is left out of the handbook 
altogether, though, judging from the number of skulls in collections, it 
is not the rarest one. It is needless to say that we make these 
remarks in no cavilling spirit, but merely to show that even in the 
works of experts the standard of accuracy is still not quite high enough. 
