1897. NOTES AND COMMENTS. 7 



it is worth pointing out that when Mr. Beard carries so far back in 

 ontogeny the meeting place of the different vertebrate groups, he is 

 only taking an unusually long step in the direction in which zoologists 

 generally have been proceeding. At first, the attempt was made to 

 arrange vertebrate groups in linear form, so that on the recapitulation 

 theory any high mammal would pass through a number of stages 

 corresponding, as one traced it backwards, first to lower mammals, 

 then to a series of reptiles, then to a series of fish, and so on. Now 

 zoologists have been busy at work arranging the groups in diverging 

 lines from remote common ancestors. In fact, we should not be sur- 

 prised to see it argued on the grounds of comparative anatomy that 

 mammals, Sauropsida, and Ichthyopsida had come independently from 

 a common stock. 



Although the law of recapitulation was drawn from considera- 

 tions of mammalian embryology, upon which Mr. Beard places an 

 interpretation opposing it, we are prepared ro support the apparent 

 paradox that a mammal may have been a mammal before it was a 

 fish, and may yet recapitulate in its ontogeny some of its ancestral 

 history. 



Wild Hybrids between the Arctic and Common Foxes. 



One of the causes which is most frequently invoked by various 

 persons to account for the presence of unexpected characters in 

 animals is crossing, and yet, as a matter of fact, hybridisation 

 occurring in the wild state and not in a menagerie, is one of the very 

 rarest phenomena possible, and, within the group of Mammalia, the 

 undoubted instances of it known might almost be counted on the 

 fingers. 



This being the case, we need make no apology for drawing the 

 attention of naturalists to Dr. Einar Lonnberg's interesting account, 

 published in a Swedish sporting journal, of an undoubted case of 

 hybridisation in the wild state between those very different species, 

 the Arctic and Common Foxes. (" En Bastard mellan fjellriif och 

 vanlig raf," in Svenska J dgarforbundets Nya Tidskrift, xxxiv. pp. 

 154-164, with coloured plate, i8g6.) 



In this paper Dr. Lonnberg carefully describes two hybrid 

 specimens between the above species, now in the Upsala Museum. 

 He conclusively shows their intermediate characters, and has happily 

 been also able to make out something of their history. For in a 

 private letter he tells us that no less than nine hybrid foxes were shot 

 or trapped within a period of two years, and these are clearly shown 

 to have been the offspring of a female Arctic fox, which had mated 

 with the common foxes of the district of Oregrund. He furthermore 

 tells us, which is highly important, that the place where the hybrids 

 were bred is far south of the usual limit of the Arctic fox, and that 

 no other specimen but the presumed parent had ever been seen 

 there. 



