NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS. 277 



the union of the Palaearctic and Nearctic regions from the 

 similarity, or rather the many similarities, to be found in their 

 faunas, but the Sclaters argue that these affinities are only of 

 recent origin, and that " palaeontological evidence seems to 

 show that, out of all the four regions embraced under the 

 term ' Arctogoea/ * the North American or Nearctic Region 

 was the first to be separated from the main mass, and that the 

 similarity is a comparatively modern element in the character of 

 the two faunas." 



It is unnecessary to refer to the most original contribution to 

 this volume, in the chapter on the Distribution of Marine Mam- 

 mals, for, as before mentioned, this article has already appeared 

 in these pages. Now that the Terrestrial and Marine Mammals 

 have been treated on the Sclaterian method, we may hope that 

 the other orders may be studied and published in the same 

 manner. Of the fifty illustrations contained in the text, no fewer 

 than forty have been designed by T. Smit for this work ; there 

 are also eight coloured maps ; and the volume may be well 

 accepted, so far as Mammals are concerned, and for a long time 

 to come, as the last authoritative statement on the subject. 



Outlines of Vertebrate Palceontology for Students of Zoology. By 

 Arthur Smith Woodward. Cambridge : at the University 

 Press. 



The study of Prehistoric Man was once completely relegated 

 to the domain of Archaeology : it is now no longer neglected by 

 the historian. It is one of the greatest benefits arising from the 

 evolutionary method in the proper study of Zoology, that both 

 Embryology and Palaeontology are now considered of primary im- 

 portance if we wish to understand the problem of present animal 

 existence. Science to-day is more interested in the past than in 

 the future of animal life, and when we really know the first we 

 may perhaps be able in some sense to predicate the second. It 

 is the hither that will guide us to the whither. As we read these 

 pages, commencing with the speculative Palaeozoic Conodonts, 



* Europe, Asia, Africa, Asiatic islands down to Wallace's line, and North 

 America down to the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, 



