98 Obituary Notices of Felloius deceased. 



embody are the orientation of the surfaces and processes of the mono- 

 treme shoulder-girdle, based on the study of its mythology ; the dis- 

 covery of the "Ursine lozenge" in the brain of the Sea Lion, and 

 consequent support of the Arctoid affinities of the Pinnipedia; the 

 conclusion that the Batrachia-Aglossa are a natural group ; and, 

 finally, his growing conviction that the Lemurs are a sub-order distinct 

 from man and the apes, and that they have been wrongly included in 

 the Primates, for which he argued more and more emphatically in some 

 of his later works. 



More sensational was his paper in the Proceedings of the Royal 

 Society ' On the Possibly Dual Origin of the Mammalia,' in which, on 

 the basis of the structure of the calcified teeth of Ornithorhynchus, he 

 attempted to argue that the Mammalia may be diphyletic, and his 

 remarkable memoir on the ' Fins of Elasmobranchs, and the Nature 

 and Homologues of Vertebrate Limbs,' in which, contemporaneously 

 with the American Thacher, he formulated the lateral fin-fold theory 

 of the origin of these. This, on the whole, is his chef-d'oeuvre, and 

 except for error by failure to appreciate the fact that in the Batoid 

 type, which he regarded as the most primitive, the forward extension 

 of the pectoral fin is secondary and due to rotation, the theory is still 

 in favour. In the manner in which the analogy between the behaviour 

 of the corresponding parts of the median and lateral fins was utilised 

 in defence of the theory, the memoir will always remain exemplary ; 

 and no slight public service was done at the time, ' by associated 

 articles in the magazines and by popular lectures on the general 

 subject of "Limbs," "Hands and Feet," in which all was treated in 

 an up-to-date manner. This memoir presents Mivart at his very best, 

 and if he had done nothing else he would through it have left his 

 mark on the progress of science. 



Much of his work lay with the Carnivora, as already remarked, and 

 he in 1881 published a book of 530 pages upon 'The Cat,' with 

 over 200 illustrations. Not only was this largely superflous beside 

 the existing memoirs of Straus-Durckheim and others, but it was 

 disappointing ; and it may be said of it that while it contains a good 

 deal that is general and useful on the first principles and elements of 

 mammalian morphology, it often fails just where aid is mostly needed 

 with the animal with which it deals. Similarly, his papers on the Dogs 

 led up to an elaborately-illustrated book, in which all the known 

 species of "Dogs, Jackals, Wolves, and Foxes," are said to be de- 

 scribed. Of this book, produced in haste, none but an adverse 

 judgment can unfortunately be given; since, for want of depth of 

 research, it is of little use to the systematist, and, in places, misleading 

 to the public. 



Huxley's - Crayfish (an Introduction to the Study of Zoology) 

 appeared in 1880, Mivart's ' Cat (an Introduction to the Study of 



