164 Analysis of Scientific Books and Memoirs. 



munication is occasionally kept up by the flight of carrier pigeons, with 

 billets tied round their legs. The commissioners, with proper feelings to- 

 ward the inmates of this dreary abode, have provided them with a se- 

 lection of Voyages and Travels, &c ; a weekly newspaper, though, (on ac- 

 count of the tides, it cannot reach them oftener than once a fortnight) 

 and also one of the monthly journals. 



IV. Acta Academiie Naturae Curiosorum. Turn. XI. Part 1. 



It may be interesting to our Zoological readers to be informed, that 

 this volume, (which has but lately reached Britain,) contains several zoo- 

 logical papers, to which some very distinguished names are attached ; 

 we have not, however, been able to observe any very striking or novel 

 views in these memoirs. Dr. Lehman has described several new species 

 of dipterous insects, which he discovered in the country around Ham- 

 burgh ; and there is a paper calculated to render more precise our know- 

 ledge of the larger cetacea by Dr. de Chamisso, being the drawings of 

 several species of whales taken from wooden figures of these animals fa- 

 bricated by the inhabitants of the Aleutian Isles. A memoir on the fossil 

 remains of a gigantic ruminating animal, by Bojanus, is followed by 

 another, the production of E. d' Alton, in which the teeth of the Giraffe 

 are carefully examined and described with a direct reference to the es- 

 say of Bojanus on the fossil animal which he has called Erycotherium. 

 Sibericum. Dr. Tilesius has attempted in a short memoir to prove 

 that the Argalis of Pallas must be the primitive or wild stock whence 

 the domestic sheep is derived. The opinion of this excellent naturalist 

 is disputed by Bojanus, in an anatomical paper, entitled, " Craniorunt 

 Argalidis, Ovis et Caprae Domestics Comparatio ;" we shall here no- 

 tice, though very briefly, the objections offered by Bojanus to the opi- 

 nions of Tilesius. 



1. In the sheep, the occiput is much longer and broader than in the 

 argalis ; on the other hand, the forehead of this latter is much broader 

 than in the sheep. The face is shortest in the argalis, and the horns 

 do not diverge so rapidly. 



2. The tail of the argalis is very short, its habits are wild and sa- 

 vage, and it is clothed with hair instead of wool. 



3. It differs from the genus Capra, in not possessing the lachrymal 

 lacunae, but rather resembling the sheep in this part of the osteology of 

 the head. Bojanus concludes from these data, that the argalis belongs 

 to a species distinct from the sheep or goat. 



We shall not here stop to argue whether or not the argalis be really 

 the original stock of the domestic sheep ; we shall merely remark, that 

 the objections drawn from the slight dissimilarity in the crania of these 

 animals are of little moment : 



1 . The size and length of the occiput in the domestic sheep, when 

 compared with the argalis, seem to depend on the elongation of the 

 head and face ; now, this is owing chiefly, as may be observed in the 



