NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS. 45 



time, though probably not in our own personal period— then will 

 many brilliant theorists see the hidden things made bare. Mean- 

 while, as we turn over these beautiful illustrations, many questions 

 arise as to the success in subterfuge, or the apparent absence of 

 concealment in the arrangement of eggs and nests. Here we 

 may rely on the whole mise en scene, for as we remember hearing 

 Boucicault declaim in the ' Octoroon ' — alas ! too many years 

 ago — "the apparatus never lies." 



The present volume is equal to its predecessors in illustration, 

 but perhaps compares less favourably by absence of narrative, the 

 treatment being more descriptive of the birds and nests them- 

 selves. The representation of the Dabchick's nest — covered and 

 uncovered — at p. '39 well exhibits the conscious strategy of a bird. 



Die Fledermciuse cles Berliner Museums fur Natarkunde : 1 Liefe- 

 rung, Die Megachiroptera. By Paul Matschie. Berlin : 

 Georg Reimer. 



Naturalists will welcome a new catalogue of the Chiroptera, 

 the late Dr. Dobson's catalogue of the Bats published in 1878, 

 naturally now requiring great revision and many additions. 

 The inception of the present work appears to be as follows. The 

 late Prof. Carl Peters, who presided at the Berlin Museum from 

 1857 to 1883, proposed to publish a monograph of the Bats, for 

 which no fewer than seventy-five plates were prepared by the 

 artists, F. Wagner and G. Mtitzel. After the death of Prof. 

 Peters these plates remained — without text — in the hands of the 

 publisher, and Dr. Matschie has stepped into the breach, and will 

 provide from his own pen a descriptive synopsis of the whole 

 order, while such additional plates will be given as are necessary 

 to bring the work into line with present zoological knowledge. 



Part I. is devoted to the Megachiroptera, or Fruit Bats, and 

 the whole work is intended to be completed in four instalments. 



We hope to give a fuller notice on the completion of the work. 



