1891. ] NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 71 
Pror. ALLEN announced that a new species of thrush had 
been discovered in Dominica, an island of the Lesser Antilles. 
The following paper was read, entitled 
RECENT WORK IN NORTH AMERICAN MAMMALOGY. 
BY J. A. ALLEN, PH.D. 
(Abstract. ) 
The present review of recent progress in North American 
mammalogy relates especially to the period since the appearance 
of Baird’s great work on the mammals of North America, pub- 
lished in 1857, forming Volume VIII. of the Government Re- 
ports on Explorations and Surveys for a Railroad Route from 
the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean, made during the 
years 1853-56. While that work is taken as the basis of depar- 
ture, it is of interest to note briefly some of the more important 
of the earlier works relating to North American mammals. 
A review of the history of North American natural history 
necessarily begins with Catesby, whose great work, ‘‘'The Nat- 
ural History of Carolina, Florida,” etc. (two volumes folio), was 
published in parts from 1730 to 1748. In this were figured and 
described for the first time a number of our mammals, 
Pennant’s ‘‘ Arctic Zodlogy ” (three volumes quarto, 1784-87) 
includes notices of many North American species. 
Besides numerous more or less important incidental contribu- 
tions made by explorers and travellers, and the descriptions of 
new species based on specimens collected by Lewis and Clarke 
in the years 1804-6, and by Major Long in 1819-20, and by va~ 
rious arctic.explorers, as Sabine, Scoresby, and Richardson, there 
is little to note till we reach the year 1825, when Richard Harlan 
published his ‘‘ Fauna Americana,” an octavo volume of about 
300 pages, devoted exclusively to North American mammals. It 
is now mainly of interest as the first general treatise on the sub- 
ject, although for its time acreditable production. He described 
127 species as ‘‘ inhabiting North America north of Mexico.” 
Of this number 11 were based on the fossil remains of extinct 
species, reducing the number of living species to 116. 
This work was soon followed by a much more extended and 
elaborate general treatise by John D. Godman, published un- 
der the title “‘ American Natural History: Part I., Mastology,” 
an octavo work in three volumes, the first two published in 
1826, the third in 1828. The work was illustrated with numer- 
ous plates engraved on copper, giving very good figures of nearly 
