Fauna of Cork. 963 



the succeeding crop in each instance displayed the required simple 

 advance in the scale of nature, still it were introducing a second hypo- 

 thesis more startling than the first, to suggest that the new species had 

 sprung from the ashes of the old. 



It were breaking a fly upon a wheel to criticise the Zoology of a 

 work that places Pterodactylus both as a lizard (p. 100), and a mam- 

 mal (p. 200), that describes the Annelida as being both below and 

 above the Articulata (pp. 62 and 203), and that assigns to Megathe- 

 rium the osseous covering of Glyptodon ; but though we decline the 

 task of criticising details like these, we may be allowed to state, that 

 any attempts to revive the Lamarckian philosophy, without some por- 

 tion of Lamarckian knowledge, is scarcely likely to succeed. As a 

 work of science, the ' Vestiges of Creation' is on a par with the 

 ' Metamorphosis of Ovid.' It is equally absurd, unnatural, and illo- 

 gical. In reading Ovid's beautiful work, we make the necessary 

 allowance : we feel that the poet is neither deceiving himself, nor 

 attempting to deceive us ; whereas in the present work there is abun- 

 dant evidence that the author is in earnest ; that his hasty and super- 

 ficial reading has supplied wild schemes and illusory visions, which 

 nothing but time and knowledge are likely to dispel. 



Notice of the Fauna of Cork.* 



There is no country in the United Kingdom the Zoology of which 

 promises a more abundant reward to the labourer than that of Cork. 

 As we have rested on our oars in the Bay of Bantry, gazing at the wild 

 scenery, and wilder eagles, soaring high up among the inaccessible 

 crags, where they have reared their young from time immemorial ; or 

 pursuing our solitary path as the shades of evening deepened, have 

 watched the bats, various in size, flight, and voice, fluttering around us; 

 or have seen the stag, that noblest of British quadrupeds, ranging the 

 mountain -sides free as the air he breathed — we have fondly sighed for 

 a historian of a district so grandly and beautifully wild, so rich in 

 Nature's treasures. Entertaining these feelings, how bitter was our 

 disappointment on opening the volume before us, so barren, so devoid 



* Contributions towards a Fauna and Flora of the county of Cork. The 

 Vertebrata by Dr. Harvey, the Mollusca, Crustacea, and Echinodermata, by J. D. 

 Humphries. 



