NEWS BULLETIN OF THE ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY 









;r| ^ 











^Ol >W . 



■t.^rfW^p^^. ^^^H 



B*Xu 





■ 



t 



{ 



* m W 





A BUFFALO CALF AND ITS MOTHER. 



The calf was born on May 28, and photographed June 13, 1901. The ragged appearance of the mother is due to the 



shedding of her winter pelage. 



A MAMMAL BOOK— AT LAST. 



During the last twenty years American orni- 

 thologists have given us bird-books galore. 

 Our North American birds, especially those 

 nearest the great publishing-houses, have been 

 written up and written down, until now it 

 seems to a layman as if nothing more can be 

 said about them that has not been told many 

 times before. 



But with our mammals, how different ! For 

 at least ten years they have been under a spell, 

 when has limited their literature either to 

 ponderous tomes on special groups, or a snow- 

 storm of pamphlets and leaves. Since the 

 publication of Baird's " Mammals," in 1857, 

 down to the close of the century, no general 

 work on the mammals of North America has 

 appeared. Worse than this, not even a check- 

 list has appeared save True's, published in 

 1884, useful once, but now quite out of date. 

 For ten years or more the situation has been 

 fairly intolerable. 



At last Mr. D. G. Elliot, of the Field Co- 

 lumbian Museum, has published through that 

 institution a work entitled " A Synopsis of the 



Mammals of North America and Adjacent 

 Seas," which is at once a boon to the public 

 and a monument to its author. In an octavo 

 volume of 471 handsome pages, the author 

 gives the name and place of nativity of every 

 recognized species and fraction of a species 

 known to exist north of Mexico, together with 

 measurements, description, and habitat. Each 

 genus is represented by large and clear illus- 

 trations of a typical skull, shown in various 

 aspects. Doubtful species, and obscure frac- 

 tions of species that have been carried out to 

 four or five decimal places, all are faithfully 

 set down, and the user of the volume can either 

 take them or leave them. A good synopsis 

 expurgatorius is now in order. 



Throughout the entire list of 619 species 

 ( fractions not counted), not one bears its Eng- 

 lish or " common " name. This is totally 

 wrong, and inexcusable. More than that, on 

 account of the strong language this omission 

 will cause in certain quarters — the shops of 

 taxidermists, for instance — it is immoral. 

 Measurements are given in millimetres only, 

 for the sole benefit of perhaps forty profes- 

 sional mammalogists, manv of whom studious- 



