The Mammalian Fauna of the Edinburgh District. 91 
* of our fauna. Should any of my readers have opportunities of 
obtaining Bats from any part of Scotland, they will confer a 
favour by forwarding specimens either to myself or to Mr 
Eagle Clarke of the Museum of Science and Art, Edinburgh, 
for examination. 
On account of their timidity and more or less nocturnal 
habits, comparatively few of our native quadrupeds come 
under the notice of the casual observer; and the same causes, 
by rendering the observation and study of them matters of 
considerable difficulty, are no doubt in great measure respon- 
sible for the scanty attention paid to the class by the majority 
of field naturalists. With the exception of the very meagre 
lists in Rhind’s “ Excursions,” illustrative of the natural 
history of the environs of Edinburgh, and in Stark’s “ Picture 
of Edinburgh,” and of a short article which Mr Eagle Clarke 
tells me he has drawn up for a “Dictionary of the Forth,” 
now being prepared by Mr D. Pollock,’ no account of the 
Mammalia of the district has hitherto, so far as I am aware, 
been written. Records and short notices bearing on the 
subject are, however, by no means scarce, though scattered 
over a wide field of zoological and other literature. <A list of 
the publications referred to is given at the end of the paper. 
The arrangement and nomenclature followed are those 
adopted by Flower and Lydekker in their newly-published 
“Introduction to the Study of Mammals,” with this excep- 
tion, namely, that I begin with the Chiroptera and end with 
the Cetacea, instead of the reverse, the result being that the 
orders are presented in the same sequence as in the second- 
edition of Bell’s “ History of British Quadrupeds,” which is 
still our standard work on these animals. The following 
quotations from Flower and Lydekker’s book are well 
worth bearing in mind in this connection. The authors 
remark, p. 84, that “In systematic descriptions in books, 
in lists, and catalogues, and in arranging collections, the 
objects dealt with must be placed in a single linear series, 
But by no means can such a series be made to coincide 
with natural affinities. The artificial character of such 
an arrangement, the constant violation of all true relation- 
1 Published May 1891. 
