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Elhnens de Zoologie, etc. Par M. H. Milne-Edwards. 2 vols. 8vo. with 

 cuts. 1834. Paris, Crochard j Bristol, Hardwick. 



Of these two volumes, the first contains a general introduction to 

 Zoology ; the second, a detailed account of the class mammalia. 



The first volume, after preliminary observations upon elementary tissues, 

 considers the great nutritive fluid, the blood, the organs of circulation, 

 absorption, exhalation, respiration, digestion, and their functions, the 

 whole occupying about half the volume. Then follow the nervous system 

 and the organs of the senses, commencing with the integument, that of tact, 

 and concluding with the eye. Observations on the intellectual faculties, on 

 motion, on the voice, and on reproduction, complete this volume. 



'J'he second volume, on the descriptive zoology of the mammalia, takes a 

 compreliensive view of the relations and importance of that class. The 

 observations upon the physiology of nations, and upon snch points of sta- 

 tistics and political oeconomy as appertain to the subject, are interesting and 

 well drawn up, as are those upon tiie stature of the human race, deduced 

 from the researches of M. Quetelet, in Belgium, from which it appears, that 

 the height of the new-born infant is about one fourteenth of its future 

 stature ; and that a male child, at the age of three years, has attained 

 rather above half his growth. The tabular contrivance for exhibiting these 

 points is ingenious, and answers its end. 



The map shaded according to the production of horses in the different 

 departments of France, and the accompanying apergu given of the natural 

 history of that very useful animal, forms a section especially interesting to 

 agricultural readers. It appears that by far the great proportion of French 

 horses, are from the departments of the north. 



The observations on the oeconomical uses of the cetacea, occurring at the 

 end of the volume, are important. 



The whale fishery, as our readers are probably aware, has long been 

 carried on in both the northern and the southern seas. In the southern, 

 the fishery of wliich was commenced by American fishermen from Massa- 

 chusetts, early in the eighteenth century, are included the waters around 

 Cape dc Verd, along the south-western shores of Africa, and those of 

 Brazil and Paraguay, to the Falkland isles, besides which the seas of 

 Japan, of the Sandwich isles, the Marquesas and Gallapagos, have been 

 fished by British vessels, in favourable seasons, with success. The northern 

 fishery is of far older date, and though the smaller in geographical extent, 

 hy far the most productive. The fishery of the north employs about one 

 hundred and fifty English vessels ; that of the soutli, about fifty or sixty. 

 In IH.SO, tlic j)roducts of the two fisheries were valued at 36114,416 ; and 

 in 1H31, in Davis's Straits and Baffin's Bay, were taken three hundred and 

 thirty wliaics ; and the seventy-five vessels employed, returned home laden 

 with 4,100 tuns of oil, and 400 quintals of whalebone. And in the same 

 year, twelve whalers on the seas of Greenland, captured eighty-six whales 



