March 27, 19 13] 



NATURE 



81 



shape and structure of some of the external organs, 

 like the feet, tail, ears, and noses, of certain 

 selected types of vertebrate animals. The book 

 contains much that is instructive and true and 

 stoggestive; but some of it is highly imaginative 

 and must not be taken too seriously by the 

 uninformed. 



There is not much that is new in Mr. Alston's 

 pleasant little volume (2). It is a collection of 

 essays on a variety of topics ranging from the 

 former existence of the wolf and beaver in Scot- 

 land to the value of different colours in the making 

 of anglers' flies. The author is a keen field 

 fcaturalist, and his ardent advocacy of the protec- 

 tion of indigenous British species of birds and 

 mammals finds expression in the chapters devoted 

 to the sea-eagle, the wild-cat, and members of 

 the weasel tribe. The book concludes with two 

 chapters quite unsuggested by the title. One is 

 upon elephants in Ceylon and the other upon the 

 sheep-killing Kea parrot of New Zealand. In this 

 there is a never previously published account of 

 this bird, supplied to Mr. Alston by Mr. Alexander 

 F. Brown, one of the survivors of the enterprising 

 pioneers of the higher ranges of the South Island. 



"The Sheep and Its Cousins" (3) is the outcome 

 of work Mr. Lydekker has been doing for some 

 years in carrying out Sir Ray Lankester's wise 

 scheme for preserving permanent records of breeds 

 of domesticated animals by exhibiting mounted 

 specimens in a special gallery in the Natural 

 History Museum. Mr. Lydekker has made good 

 use of the opportunities afforded by his official 

 position in that institution to get together ex- 

 amples of many rare forms of sheep, about which 

 rnost zoologists had previously nothing beyond 

 bibliographical knowledge. An account of these, 

 together with descriptions of the principal Euro- 

 pean breeds and summaries of the highly specu- 

 lative views of authors touching their origins and 

 affinities, about which practrcally nothing is 

 known, forms the greater part of this volume, 

 which will form a useful guide for a more thorough 

 and scientific treatise on the subject. 



In connection with the oft discussed, but quite 

 unsettled, question of the origin of tame sheep, 

 one cannot suppress a feeling of envy at the assur- 

 ance with which their differences from wild species 

 are lightly dismissed as due to domestication; 

 and cine wonders if Mr. Lydekker realises that his 

 adoption, or seeming adoption, of the view that 

 they are descended from two or more distinct 

 species involves the conclusion that their common 

 characters must have been independently de- 

 veloped at least twice. It may be so; but the 

 evidence for this amounts at present to very little. 

 About the treatment of the wild species, one is 

 N<~>. 226^. VOL. qil 



at a loss what to say, except that if the author 

 really knows them, apart from their geographical 

 distribution, he has been very unjust to himself. 

 Presumably, the scientifically indefensible inclusion 

 of the Audad (Ammotragus) and the Bharal 

 (Pseudoi's) in a volume devoted to sheep (Ovist, 

 from which goats (Capra) are excluded, is a con- 

 cession to popular terminology ; but since Mr. 

 Lydekker calls them "aberrant sheep" one sus- 

 pects that he scarcely appreciates rightly the dis- 

 tinguishing characters of these four genera. 

 Naturally, the book is not free from mistakes. 

 For instance, it is stated that the female Bharal 

 lacks at all ages the dark markings of the male. 

 Probably this is never true. Certainly it is not 

 always true. This and other errors, however, will 

 no doubt be corrected in future editions. 



(4) In compiling a catalogue of the skeletal 

 and anatomical remains of the Cetacea, Sirenia, 

 and Pinnipedia belonging to the University of 

 Edinburgh, Sir William Turner has taken the 

 opportunity of putting into the hands of zoologists 

 an invaluable monograph containing brief defini- 

 tions of the families, genera, and often of the 

 species of these three orders, as well as descrip- 

 tions of the chief osteological, dental, anatomical, 

 and foetal preparations in the rich collection at 

 his disposal. A surprising amount of information 

 is packed into the two hundred odd pages of the 

 volume, and when one adds that it is illustrated 

 with seventeen plates and more than one hundred 

 text figures, no further evidence need be adduced 

 of its usefulness to students of these orders. 



For the classification of the Cetacea, the author 

 has paid special attention to the characters dis- 

 played by the fronto-naso-premaxillary region, 

 the rostrum, the hard palate and pterygoids, the 

 teeth and the tympano-periotic bones, and, in the 

 introduction to this order, the principal modifica- 

 tions of these parts of the skull in different genera 

 are briefly detailed. The rest of this introduction 

 contains an account, equally interesting to 

 naturalists and zoologists, of species of whales 

 stranded on the coast of Scotland both in recent 

 times and in the prehistoric period before the land 

 and sea had assumed their present level. 



The aim of Dr. Lloyd's book (5) is, as he tells 

 us, to lessen the belief in natural selection as 

 a creative agency, and its pages are devoted 

 mainly to pointing out the variations in colour 

 and other characters presented by the common 

 black rat (Mus rattus) in India. Exceptional 

 opportunities for this valuable piece of statistical 

 research work were afforded by the campaign 

 against these pests undertaken by the Plague 

 Commission in 1907, examination of the material 

 sent to Calcutta being part of Dr. Lloyd's work. 



