356 NATURAL SCIENCE. Nov., 



whereas its variety rutilus has a wide continental range. We read 

 also (p. 1 86) that " a black slug spotted with yellow, Geomalacm maciilosus, 

 was discovered on the shores of Lake Caragh, in Kerry, in the year 

 1842, and has not been met with elsewhere since that year." More 

 than twenty years ago Heynemann recorded this species from Portugal, 

 and recently its known range in the south-west of Ireland has been 

 considerably extended. This error is specially unfortunate, as the occur- 

 rence of the slug in both Portugal and south-west Ireland is far more 

 suggestive and interesting than if it were found in the latter country 

 alone. It is hard to understand how Mr. Beddard can have been 

 betrayed into these statements, as the facts about both butterfly and 

 slug are correctly given (pp. 347, 357) in the last edition of " Island 

 Life," although Dr. Wallace, by some oversight, includes G. maciilosus 

 in his list (p. 356) of peculiar British species. 



Possibly the book has been somewhat hastily compiled ; the name 

 of the Liberian hippopotamus (p. 100) is given as Chceropotamiis (a genus 

 of Eocene ungulates) instead of Chceropsis, and we are told (p. 89) that 

 "a great many of the [Palaearctic] mammalia are either specifically 

 identical with North American forms or are very near indeed to 

 them. The Aurochs and the Wapiti are hardly, if at all, specifically 

 different from Luhdorf's Deer and the American bison." Surely the 

 student Avill gather from this that the Aurochs is a deer and that the 

 Palaearctic bison is known as the Wapiti ! 



Mr. Beddard's concluding chapter is devoted to theoretical con- 

 siderations. He warns the reader that the place where a group of 

 animals is at present most abundant need not be the place of its 

 origin. But he then puts forward a view, which will probably be the 

 greatest surprise to naturalists to be found in the book, that the 

 marsupials originated in Australia. Mr. Beddard seems led to this 

 opinion by the consideration that, though some placental mammals 

 have made their way into the Australian Region, the marsupials have 

 not been exterminated by them. " The Marsupials," he writes, 

 " have had the start in a country eminently suited to them, and have 

 only been beaten in the struggle for existence in regions subsequently 

 settled in by them and therefore perhaps less fit for their peculiar 

 organisation." The older view, that the marsupials have found in 

 Australia a "protected area" seems, however, to have far more to 

 commend it to our acceptance. The extreme paucity of the Austra- 

 lian placental mammals as compared with the marsupials, and the 

 divergence of the latter into groups of structure and habits corres- 

 ponding with the various placental orders, point to the marsupials 

 having had in Australia a tract preserved for their almost exclusive 

 use. And the spread of the rabbit in Australia (which Mr. Beddard 

 strangely brings forward in support of his view) surely shows what 

 would happen to the marsupials were a large influx of placentals to 

 take place. Perhaps, however, Mr. Beddard holds this opinion loosely, 

 for in the section on the Polar Origin of Life, immediately following, 

 he instances the marsupials as an ancient and primitive group, " once 

 existing in great variety in Europe and North America .... the 

 survivors having now been pushed into the furthest corner of the 

 world — the Australian Continent." 



A question of much interest touched at several points in Mr. 

 Beddard's book is the possibility of a form of life originating inde- 

 pendently in more than one place. As to this, he is disposed to adopt 

 a " middle position." There can be no reasonable doubt that an 

 identical variety may be developed independently in two places under 

 similar conditions. And as, on any theory of evolution, the variety 



