206 Address delivered at the sixth and last 
much elucidation on the affinities of the Mammalia. This sub- 
ject he has deeply studied, and with considerable success. 
Dr. Horsfield and my on have, during the same period, 
added to the number of our feline animals, by an account of 
a strongly marked species, the Felis nepalénsis. A figure of 
this animal has been engraved for the supplementary plates 
of the Zoological Journal. We have subjoined the details of 
another animal of the same group in the collection of the 
Zoological Society, which, however, we conjecture to be one 
of the numerous alleged varieties of the Felis rifa Gadd. 
Next to the interest conferred by the introduction of new 
species is that afforded by the more accurate description of 
those which have been previously, but imperfectly, known. 
In information of this nature the past year has been unusually 
fertile. At the head of the publications devoted to this sub- 
ject, I must place the paper of our friend and colleague, Mr. 
William S. Macleay, on the Hutias of Cuba, the group cha- 
racterised by M. Desmarest under the name of Capromys. In 
this paper four species s of the group are accurately character~ 
ised from living specimens, and identified with the deseriptions 
of some of the ¢ earlier voyagers, more particularly with those of 
Oviedo, who published his remarks on the natural history of 
the New World within five and thirty years after its discovery. 
In this essay our distinguished fr iend has exhibited additional 
proof of that extreme tact, which we ever remarked in him 
while among us, of selecting all that is valuable, and rejecting 
all that is irrelevant, in the works of his predecessors. 
I have already referred to the valuable work of Dr. Richard- 
son, published within this year, on the Mammalia of North 
America, in which he has exhibited as much to elucidate the 
remarks of antecedent naturalists as originality on his own 
part. Among the animals whose history he has cleared up in 
that work I should particularise a few, were it not difficult to 
make a selection where all are of interest. I must notice, 
however, with especial commendation, his remarks on the 
Sewellel, whose characters and station in nature he had pre- 
viously pointed out for the first time, with his usual accuracy, 
in the Zoological Journal. 
To our colleague, Mr. Jenyns, we stand indebted for some 
interesting observations on the common Bat of this country, 
generally described as the Vespertilio murinus of Linnzeus. 
These observations are followed up by some remarks on the 
Vespertilionide in gener al. It is a subject of congratulation 
to the friends of science, that this gentleman thus actively con- 
tinues to communicate the results of his acute and diligent 
researches into the British Fauna. I have here to add that a 
