434 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



EDITORIAL GLEANINGS, 



The opening passage of Prof. L. C. Miall's Address to Section D. 

 (Zoology) at the recent meeting of the British Association at Toronto will 

 receive the hearty approval of most readers of * The Zoologist': — " It has 

 long been my conviction that we study animals too much as dead things. 

 We name them, arrange them according to our notions of their likeness or 

 unlikeness, and record their distribution. Then perhaps we are satisfied, 

 forgetting that we could do as much with minerals or remarkable boulders. 

 Of late years we have attempted something more; we now teach every 

 student of zoology to dissect animals, and to attend to their development. 

 This is, I believe, a solid and lasting improvement ; we owe it largely to 

 Huxley, though it is but a revival of the method of Dollinger, who may be 

 judged by the eminence of his pupils, and by the direct testimony of Baer, 

 to have been one of the very greatest of biological teachers. But the 

 animals set before the young zoologist are all dead ; it is much if they are 

 not pickled as well. When he studies their development he works chiefly 

 or altogether upon continuous sections, embryos mouuted in balsam, and 

 wax models. He is rarely encouraged to observe live tadpoles or third-day 

 chicks with beating hearts. As for what Gilbert White calls the life and 

 conversation of animals, how they defend themselves, feed, and make love, 

 this is commonly passed over as a matter of curious but not very important 

 information ; it is not reputed scientific, or at least not eminently scientific." 



Dr. D. G. Elliot has contributed to the Zoological Series of the Field 

 Columbian Museum, Chicago, a List of Mammals from Somali-land, 

 obtained by the Museum's East African Expedition. One observation 

 bears witness to the danger of a solely museum knowledge of an animal. 

 Madoqua phillipsi, Thomas (Phillips's Dik-Dik), has a remarkable pecu- 

 liarity in " the immense deposit in the antorbital vacuity of a black pig- 

 ment, which stains everything it touches. It forms a swelling just in 

 front of the eye, and from its jet-black colour and considerable size makes 

 a very conspicuous mark. No trace of this exists in the skin, and as the 

 skull shows a cavity at this point, no one would imagine that there would 

 here be a prominence on the face instead of a depression. The lack of 

 knowledge of such facts as this causes the mounted specimens in museums 



