J22 



NATURE 



[June ii, 189: 



by the characters of their teeth, being all heterodont 

 and diphyodont with their dental system reducible to a 

 common formula." I have for many years made use 

 in my lectures of the classification of Mammalia above 

 indicated which may be summarized thus : — 



Class MAMMALIA, 

 Grade A. Monotrema. 

 Grade B. DiTREMA. 



Branch a. Marsupialia. 



Branch i. Placentalia. 

 Cfl CO cn cn 



No doubt it is difficult, even with the use of the addi- 

 tional terms " grade," " branch," and " sub-branch," to 

 set forth the relations to one another of the known orders 

 and sub-orders of Typidentata ; but the attempt must be 

 made, and there are materials in the present work for 

 gathering some indications of the form which such a ten- 

 tative pedigree would take had the authors gone so far as 

 to formulate it. 



In the chapter on geographical distribution, the six 

 zoological regions of the globe proposed by Dr. Sclater in 

 1857 are accepted. But here, as in regard to the treat- 

 ment of morphological groups, it seems that a primary 

 grouping of the divisions recognized might with advantage 

 be introduced, which would give a truer expression of the 

 historic relations of existing land surfaces than that 

 adopted. Reference is made to the proposed elevation 

 of New Zealand into a primary region, but would not the 

 truth be more nearly expressed by separating New Zea- 

 land and the rest of the world first of all, as Atheriogaea 

 and Theriogasa ? Should not the Australian region next 

 be separated from the rest of TheriogcCa ? Theriogaea 

 would then be divided into the Terra Marsupialium and 

 the Terra Placentalium (without prejudice to the recog- 

 nition of the occurrence of a limited number of Mar- 

 supials in the latter). The Terra Placentalium includes 

 the five regions called by Sclater Patearctic, Nearctic, Neo- 

 tropical, Ethiopian, and Indian. The authors of the 

 present work mention Dr. Heilprin's opinion that the 

 Palaearctic and Nearctic regions should be united and 

 called the Holarctic region. But they do not adopt this 

 opinion, nor refer to Huxley's proposal to term this same 

 area Arctogaea, and his suggestive speculations as to the 

 successive connections of the three great peninsulas (as 

 they are at present)— the Neotropical, the Ethiopian, and 

 the Indian — with this northern land surface. 



I have ventured to cite one or two instances in which 

 the methods of classification adopted in the " Study of 

 Mammalia " appear to be open to improvement. I trust 

 that I may without offence express a doubt as to what 

 precisely is the meaning of the last part of the following 

 passage : — 



"The researches of palaeontologists, founded upon 

 studies of casts of the interior of the cranial cavity of 



NO. 1 1 28, VOL. 44] 



extinct forms, have shown that, in many natural groups of 

 Mammals, if not in all, the brain has increased in size 

 and also in complexity of surface foldings with the 

 advance of time, indicating in this, as in so many other 

 respects, a gradual progress from a lower to a higher 

 type of development." 



I confess that I do not understand what this " lower" 

 and " higher type of development " refer to. The re- 

 markable thing about the small brains of extinct Ungu- 

 lata is that, whilst they differ enormously in relative size 

 and in the low development of other features from the 

 brains of living Ungulates, their possessors exhibited no 

 corresponding difference of skeletal structure ; so that it 

 appears that the brain has had an independent evolution, 

 advancing in size and complexity from the initial phase of 

 the primitive Ungulate far further than has the general 

 body-structure. The gap in respect of brain between man 

 and the highest apes, accompanied as it is by mere trivial 

 differences of bodily structure, appears to be a less 

 marked case of the same general phenomenon. We may 

 say that the brain in the one case is in a lower and in 

 the other in a higher stage of development ; but whether 

 the authors mean this merely, or that the whole animal 

 has passed " from a lower to a higher type of develop- 

 ment," and to what kind of morphological doctrine that 

 phraseology belongs, are matters which do not imme- 

 diately explain themselves. 



The only way to write of so large, so comprehensive, 

 and so authoritative a work as the present, is to point 

 out a few matters for discussion which a rapid review of 

 its pages suggests. Such indications of topics on which 

 one would like to know more from the authors of a book 

 of this kind are not fault-findings, but samples of the 

 interest which it awakens in a sympathetic reader. 



E. Ray Lankester. 



FORTY YEARS IN A MOORLAND PARISH. 

 Forty Years in a Moorland Parish. By the Rev. J. C. 

 Atkinson, D.C.L. (London ; Macmillan and Co., 

 1891.) 



THE moorland parish of which Dr. Atkinson writes 

 is the parish of Danby, which lies among the 

 Cleveland Hills, some miles inland from Whitby. Here 

 he has worked as a clergyman for forty-five years. To 

 a man of narrow sympathies and little intellectual curio- 

 sity the position might have been trying enough ; but in 

 the life of the people, in the aspects of Nature, and in 

 local problems appealing to the antiquary and the his- 

 torian, Dr. Atkinson has found sources of interest which 

 have never lost their charm. In the present volume he 

 records some reminiscences of the pursuits which have 

 occupied him, and of the impressions which have been 

 made upon him, during all these years ; and a very 

 fascinating record it is. He not only has powers of 

 keen and accurate observation, but carries on his re- 

 searches in a thoroughly scientific spirit ; and he is a 

 master of the difficult art of stating problems in a manner 

 that secures attention while they are being gradually 

 solved. His immediate subject is Danby ; but if the 

 author had never raised his eyes to look further afield, 

 bis readers might soon have felt that he had told them 

 about as much as they wished to know. Facts relating 



