194 Scientific Intelligence — Zoology. 



within so short a distance of the metropolis is a matter of no little 

 interest, as connected with the extension of its cultivation. 



ZOOLOGY. 



21. Equus Hemionus. — By the exertions of Captain Ramsay, the 

 senior assistant in Gurhwal, aided by the commissioner, Mr Lushing- 

 ton, slavery, which was carried on in that country to some extent, has 

 been entirely abolished, also all transit duties. While alluding to 

 Kumaon affairs, we may mention here, more prominently than has 

 hitherto been done, as it will be interesting to Zoologists, that a live 

 specimen of the Kiang or wild horse {Equus hemionus), was pur- 

 chased at Bagesur by the Lieut. -Governor, and is now en route to 

 Calcutta, from whence it will be at once despatched by the overland 

 route to the Zoological Society of London. It is now some eighteen 

 months old, and is about twelve hands in height. It was caught 

 when very young on the elevated (15,000 feet) plains of Thibet, and 

 has been thoroughly tamed ; there is every probability therefore 

 that it will reach England in good condition, and form, together 

 with the wild Bulls or Aurochs lately presented by the Emperor of 

 llussia, a great object of attraction at the gardens in Regent's Park. 



22. Dr M. Barry^s Physiological Discoveries. — In the last 

 Number of the British and Foreign Medical Review, edited by Dr 

 Forbes, a distinguished physiologist has the following remarks in 

 regard to Dr Martin Barry's important physiological discoveries : — 



" The writer of the remarks in question, after shewing the im- 

 portance of the combination of anatomical and physiological investi- 

 gations with zoological researches, states that M. Milne Edwards, in 

 several of his later Memoirs, ' has even adopted the principle, that 

 embryology affords our best and surest guide in classification ; as it 

 is by the study of development that we are enabled most certainly to 

 distinguish between those essential chai'acters on which affinity de- 

 pends, and those accessory characters which are engrafted (so to 

 speak) on the original type for some special purpose. This doctrine 

 was first formally enunciated by him in a Memoir on the Principles 

 of the Natural Classification of Animals, published by him in 1844 :* 

 in which he points out that the condition of the earliest germ of all 

 animals is the same ; namely, the simple cell : — that the earliest 

 phases of its development differ according to the sub- kingdom to 

 which it belongs, whether radiated, molluscous, articulated, or verte- 

 brated, and that the distinctive characters of these sub-kingdoms are 

 consequently those first evolved ; — that, in the further progress of 

 development, the characters of the classes next present themselves, 

 then those of the orders, then those of the families, genera, and 

 species consecutively, and lastly those of the individual. We are 



* Annales des Sciences Naturelles, N. S. Zooh, tome i., p. 65. 



