1891. ] NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 15 
external characters, supplemented by an extended account of 
their habits by Capt. Charles Bryant, formerly a Government 
agentat the Fur Seal Islands. Later very elaborate reports by 
Mr. Henry W. Elliott, on the habits of the species, have been 
published by the Treasury Department of the Government. 
In 1874 appeared Capt. C. M. Scammon’s work, ‘‘'The Ma- 
rine Mammals of the Northwestern Coast of North America, 
described and illustrated. together with an account of the 
American Whale-Fishery,” a quarto volume of about 325 pages 
and 27 lithographic plates. The appearance of this work marked 
an erain the history of our marine mammalia, though restricted 
to those of the Pacific coast. It covered a new field, and fur- 
nished an inexhaustible fund of information, to which we are 
still almost wholly limited, as far as the life histories of the spe- 
cies are concerned. Cope, Gill, and Dall have contributed also 
various important papers on the Cetacea, treating the subject 
from the systematic side, and largely relating to the species of 
the Pacific coast. 
More recently Mr. F. W. True, Curator of Mammals in the 
United States National Museum, has entered the field, and, be- 
sides numerous minor papers on various species of the Atlantic 
coast, has recently published ‘‘ A Review of the Family Del- 
phinide,” an octavo memoir of 200 pages, with 47 plates. This 
is a monograph of the porpoises and dolphins of the world, and 
is a most welcome and able contribution to the subject. Sixty- 
two species are described, and nearly all are figured. 
J. D. Caton has published numerous papers on our deer, and 
in 1877 an octavo volume of nearly 500 pages, with numerous 
woodcuts, entitled ‘The Antelope and Deer of America,” It 
deals principally with their habits, affinities, and susceptibility 
to domestication, and is in its way an excellent treatise, and the 
only one relating exclusively to these animals. 
Our most important ruminant, the American bison, was 
monographed by myself in 1876 in a quarto memoir of about 
260 pages and 12 plates. Mr. Hornaday, in an octavo paper of 
nearly 200 pages, with many illustrations, entitled ‘The Ex- 
termination of the American Bison,” published in 1889, has ad- 
mirably brought the subject down to date. 
In 1877 Dr. Coues published his ‘‘ Fur-Bearing Animals: a 
Monograph of North American Mustelidx.” It is an octavo of 
about 350 pages and 20 plates, and forms a most important con- 
tribution to the literature of North American mammals. 
In 1877. also, Dr. Coues and myself published a series of 
monographs of the various families of North American rodents, 
forming a quarto volume of 1,100 pages, entitled ‘‘ Monographs 
