18 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. II. No. 27. 



Municipal Council on the 1st of April, and 

 the Council granted likewise a sum of £400 

 to the Observatoiy for the same end. Be- 

 sides, the shipping companies established at 

 Shanghai have promised to subscribe for 

 the same purpose a sum, the amount of 

 which their agents have not been able to 

 fix immediately, but the sum total may, 

 perhaps, be equivalent to £400. But this 

 sum of £1,200 will be very little for an 

 equatorial telescope of convenient size, for 

 instance of an aperture of 20 inches ; very 

 little especially for a complete astronomical 

 observatory. 



I have made up my mind to address 

 mj'self to all those to whom the Lord has 

 distributed, together with fortune, the love 

 of science and the desire of utilizing for its 

 advance the fortune they possess. It is to 

 them to whom I make application, begging 

 them to be so kind as to contribute, accord- 

 ing to the pecuniary means they may dis- 

 pose of, to that development of the Zi-ka-wei 

 Observatory. I am aware that to solicit 

 thus of the public a subscription in favor of 

 a private institution, it would be necessary 

 to be able to present simultaneously titles 

 to the benevolence and guarantees that the 

 solicited money will be usefully employed 

 for the proposed end. But the Zi-ka-wei 

 Observatory can present, I believe, both. 

 Its titles to the benevolence it is its past, 

 and its work of which I have spoken about 

 above ; titles which, as it has been seen, are 

 far from being denied by the community of 

 Shanghai. The said work constitutes also, 

 I presume, the best guarantee that the 

 asked-for money will be usefully emploj^ed. 

 My claim, being founded on these consid- 

 erations, I dare hope that my request will 

 be received kindly and that numerous bene- 

 factors will be willing to help us to succeed 

 in this useful undertaking. 



Stanislas Chevaliee S. J. 

 Director of the Observatory. 



Zi-ka-wei, near Shanghai, 8 April, 1895. 



SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE. 

 The Royal Natural History. Edited by Rich- 



AED Lydekkee. Vol. III., pp 596. 



Eoyal8°. 1894-1895; Frederick Warne 



& Co., London and New York. 



Volume III. of this important work has 

 just reached America. The first half is de- 

 voted to Mammals ; the second to Birds. 

 The gi'oups of Mammals treated are the Ce- 

 taceans, Eodents, Edentates, Marsupials 

 and Monotremes, thus concluding the class. 

 One hunch-ed and thirty-six pages are given 

 to the Rodentia — the most difiicult order of 

 all. That this chapter is the best popular 

 account of the group yet written goes with- 

 out saying, though in numerous details it is 

 sadlj' behind the present state of knowl- 

 edge, particularly with reference to Ameri- 

 can forms. 



In describing the molar teeth of rodents 

 the author forgot the Geomyidce and Aplodontia 

 when he said : ' permanently-growing root- 

 less molars alivays have complex crowns.' 

 But he made a happy comparison, and one 

 easily remembered, respecting the parallel- 

 ism between the molar teeth of rodents and 

 of the mastodons and elephants, "the molar 

 tooth of a mouse, which has distinct roots 

 and a low crown with simple cusps, being 

 exactly comparable to that of a mastodon ; 

 whereas the high crowned laminated and 

 rootless molar of a guinea pig corresponds 

 as closely with that of a modern elephant." 



In describing the coloration of the group 

 as a whole he says that no rodent has ' the 

 tail ornamented with alternate light and 

 dark rings,' forgetting the handsome Mexi- 

 can ring-tailed ground squirrel {Spermophil'us 

 annulatus) described by Audubon and Bach- 

 man half a century ago. 



His ideas of the American chipmunks are 

 hopelessly mixed. He says that southern 

 specimens of the common eastern Tamias 

 striatus are ' lighter in color than those from 

 the north.' The reverse is the case. In 

 the same paragraph a California species is 



