1286 The Zoologist— July, 18G8. 



Wood Pigeon. — May 18. The crop and gizzard of a wood pigeon 

 shot this afternoon contained nothing but the berries of the spurge 

 laurel {Daphne Laureola), a shrub which hitherto I have not found in 

 the neighbourhood. 



John Cordeaux. 



Great Coles, Ulreby, Lincolnshire, 

 June 5, 1868. 



NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS. 



' Coleopiera Hesperidum; being an Enumeration of the Coleopterous 

 Insects of the Cape Verde Archipelago.'' By T. Vernon 

 Wollaston, M.A., F.L.S. London: Van Voorst. 1867. Demy 

 8vo, 285 pp. and an outline Map. 



It has been my privilege to receive every one of Wollaston's 

 volumes as it issued from the press, and I may truly add to derive 

 pleasure and profit from its contents. I have read with the most 

 scrupulous care every sentence he has penned bearing on principles, 

 and if I cannot lay claim to having paid equal attention to his 

 characters of genera and species, it is because they are not designed 

 for one who, like myself, has little or no knowledge of the objects they 

 are written to differentiate, aud certainly, during the short remainder 

 of my life, I shall never make their acquaintance. 



Mr. Wollaston is one of the very few English naturalists who did 

 not receive with open arms the very plausible — I may perhaps say the 

 very beautiful — hypotheses of Mr. MacLeay and Mr. Darwin, on the 

 ground of their becoming so fashiouable. When I was beginning 

 Natural History I found that not to be Quinarian was not to be 

 received into scientific society — was, in fact, ostracising myself; and 

 now, in the sere and yellow leaf of my career, I find myself equally 

 unable to become Vestigian, or Lamarckian, or Darwinian, whichever 

 may be the more appropriate and descriptive term, and for a second 

 time 1 am ignored as a man of science. I have seen Quinarianism 

 and its fiery advocates depart to their eternal rest ; but Darwinism is 

 still in the zenith of its fame, and has attained this fame quite as much 

 through the instrumentality of a few injudicious opponents as through 

 that of a multitude of unflinching advocates. It has always seemed 

 to me that in order to oppose MacLeay or Colenso or Darwin, or any 

 other great innovator successfully, it is necessary to think out the 



