1552 The Zoologist — February, J 869. 



hibernicus), the bones of which are so frequently disinterred from the 

 bogs : he says that he " once imagined that these deer, whose remains 

 we behold with wonder, were common, and that the Firbolgs, — a 

 northern tribe said to have invaded Ireland three hundred years before 

 our era, — who delighted in hunting, had early destroyed them." This 

 opinion, he goes on to say, he relinquishes, " because the teeth of 

 elephants have also been found in this island, an animal which we are 

 sure was not a native ; and the President of the Royal Irish Academy, 

 Richard Kirwan, LL.D., F.R.S. (Traus. R. I. Acad., vol. vi., p. 233), 

 whose mineralogical, chemical and philosophical knowledge is admired 

 in every part of Europe, and whose talent and accomplishments reflect 

 the highest honour on his native country, having by solid reasoning, 

 from Scripture and Geology, demonstrated that this appearance of the 

 southern animals was in consequence of the Deluge." We may smile 

 at the learned President's solid reasoning, but perhaps another genera- 

 tion will write Ichabod on some of our own choicest speculations: 

 viewed, however, in the light which modern research has thrown 

 upon the subject. Dr. Ledvvich would have done better to have stuck 

 to his Firbolgs. Edwin Birchall. 



Airedale Cliff, Newlay, Leeds, 

 December 20, 1868. 



NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS. 



* The Mysteries of the Ocean.' Translated, Edited and Enlarged from 

 the French of Arthur Mangin, by the Translator of ' The 

 Birds.' London : T. Nelson and Sons, Paternoster Row. 



Thanks, gentle translator of 'The Birds,' whoever thou mayst be, 

 for this beautiful and welcome present. Well hast thou written that, 

 " in order to adapt it to the wants of an English reader, and to make 

 it more complete as a survey of the life and history of the ocean," 

 thou hast made " numerous interpolations and additions, amounting 

 probably to a fifth of the whole;" and again thou hast " also been 

 careful to bring down the information to the latest date, and to exhibit 

 the results of the most recent scientific research." I desire to state 

 most explicitly that the subject is one of the greatest interest, one on 

 which there has long existed a gap in our literature, notwithstanding 

 the unwearying efforts of my friend Mr. Gosse. Then, as regards the 

 getting up ; the printing, paper and binding are superb : the wood-culs 



