NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS. 



355 



formed the subject of one of the Zoological Society's * Davis 

 Lectures,' might have furnished some useful hints. 



Through the courtesy of the publishers, Messrs. Warne & Co., 

 we are enabled to reproduce half-a-dozen of the illustrations, 

 selected here and there from parts before us. 



The figure of the Seal (Phoca vitulina) furnishes a charac- 

 teristic attitude of an animal which, though common enough on 

 many parts of the British coast, and occasionally found in rivers 

 some distance from the sea, is seldom seen by the majority of 



The Seal, Phoca vitulina. 



people except in museums and zoological gardens. The account 

 given of it by Mr. Lydekker is brief, though he conveys a good 

 idea of its geographical distribution, which is very extensive, 



In the illustration of the European Wild Boar we recognise 

 the master hand of Joseph Wolf, and regret that we do not 

 find more of his work in the present volume. As a former 

 denizen of English forests the Wild Boar is an animal to which 

 a peculiar interest attaches, since it forms a connecting link, 

 as it were, between past and present— between those extinct 

 creatures whose former existence in our country is known to us 

 only by the discovery of their fossil remains, and those which 

 are still living at the present day. As a beast of the chase he 

 has been renowned from the earliest times, and still continues 

 to test the prowess of sportsmen in France, German}'* and other 

 parts of the world, including India, where " Hog-hunting" (or 



