38 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



needed information. Indeed, unless we are much mistaken, they 

 have long been engaged in that direction, yet we do not find any 

 quotation of the results, or extracts from their published ' Pro- 

 ceedings ' or * Transactions.' Even in the case of an animal like 

 Ornithorhynchus, on which so much has been written during the 

 past ten years, the reader is expected to be satisfied with a 

 reprint of the observations made by Dr. George Bennett, so long 

 ago as 1829-32, while the later researches of Bay Lankester, 

 Flower, P. H. Macgillivray, Turner, Caldwell, Poulton, Pritchard, 

 Stewart, Gill, Cope, Thomas, and others, are altogether passed 

 over in silence. 



A few pages of bibliography would have formed a most useful 

 appendix to the volume, and, indeed, in a work supposed to be 

 " up to date," should have been supplied. Mr. Lydekker has 

 contented himself too much with classification, synonymy, and 

 technical descriptions, while the coloured figures which are given 

 are those of species which (with few exceptions) were known forty 

 years ago, when these old plates were first published. It would 

 have been far more satisfactory to have given new plates of 

 species which have come to light since Gould's time. To be 

 progressive, what we need is good figures of new species, or 

 better figures of old ones than at present exist. Both, indeed, 

 would be desirable, if publishers were only more enterprising, 

 and authors more firm in their advice. 



In the preparation of the letterpress Mr. Lydekker's labours 

 have no doubt been lightened by his adoption of the classification 

 and nomenclature given by Mr. Oldfield Thomas, in his excellent 

 ' Catalogue of the Marsupials in the Collection of the British 

 Museum,' published in 1888 ; but he has brought his work up to 

 date by including in their proper places the species which have 

 since then been described. Amongst these, perhaps the most 

 noticeable is the curious Mole-like Marsupial Notoryctes typhlops, 

 which was originally described by Dr. Stirling, in the ' Trans- 

 actions of the Royal Society of South Australia in 1891.' As Dr. 

 Stirling's account of its habits has been already printed in * The 

 Zoologist' (1891, p. 393), it will be unnecessary to repeat what is 

 there stated, though we may observe that Mr. Lydekker gives 

 some additional details of interest which have recently come to 

 light. The coloured plate which he gives of this animal is a 

 useful addition, although it has been unfortunately misplaced, 



