298 Bibliographical Notices. 



catalogued and published, besides other matter enough to fill, with 

 the catalogues, six volumes of Transactions ; and that they have ac- 

 complished something towards promoting a taste for the study of 

 natural history would appear pretty evident when we find that nearly 

 four-fifths of the matter of the Part of the Transactions just issued 

 have been contributed by authors who were school-boys when the 

 Club was founded. Moreover there are now in preparation, by 

 members of the Club, catalogues of the Birds, Crustacea, Annelida, 

 Echinodermata, Foraminifera, Flowering-Plants and Ferns, and 

 Freshwater Algse of the two counties (Northumberland and Durham). 

 With these completed, we may look in vahi, we fear, for another dis- 

 trict in England where so much shall have been done towards the 

 investigation of its natural history. 



Nevertheless much will then remain for the Tynesiders to accom- 

 plish. The Fish, Reptiles, and Amphibia, several orders of the 

 Insecta, all the Arachnida and Coelenterata, various groups of the 

 Protozoa, besides all the Carboniferous Fossils, both vegetable and 

 animal, will still be left to catalogue. Even with good lists of the 

 faunas and floras of their district, they will scarcely have done more 

 than have taken a census of the inhabitants of their domain. They 

 will know what they have yet to investigate : this much they will 

 have achieved ; but the chief part of their work — the true study of 

 the various creatures enumerated in their catalogues — will only be 

 beginning. For the natural history of any animal or plant, let it be 

 ever so lowly, means something more than a pair of Latinized names 

 and a string of scientific words for a diagnosis. This, at least, is our 

 conception of the matter ; and we hope that it is that of the working 

 naturalists of the Tyneside Club, and that they will not rest satisfied 

 in cataloguing their natural treasures, but, like true men, will con- 

 tinue their labours until they have wrought out the history of them 

 also. 



Part II. of the sixth volume of the Tyneside Transactions includes 

 the President's Address for the present year, a catalogue of Mammalia, 

 and papers and reports on zoology, geology, botany, and meteorology, 

 amounting altogether to about 200 pages. Five plates and several 

 woodcuts illustrate the papers. The most important portion of the 

 Part is the Catalogue of Mammaha by Messrs. Mennell and Perkins. 

 Good local catalogues, even of Mammalia, are still desiderata inEnglish 

 zoology ; and these authors deserve the thanks of zoologists generally 

 for so valuable a contribution to their science. As the authors ob- 

 serve, there are few districts in England in which we might expect 

 to find so large a mammalian fauna as in that embraced by these two 

 northern counties ; for in it are extensive regions of fells, or moors, 

 almost as wild as nature left them, and very sparsely populated, 

 where we may reasonably suppose that several of the wild animals 

 which have long ago disappeared from other parts of England with 

 the progress of cultivation, will still be found to have their retreats. 



Of the 75 species of English Mammalia. Messrs. Mennell & Perkins 

 claim 59 as occurring in Northumberland and Durham. They 

 remark as follows:— "Of the 7b species of Mammalia usually in- 



