PREFACE 



With the December issue ' The Zoologist ' has reached the end of 

 the nineteenth century, and has completed its fifty-eighth volume. It 

 is interesting to glance at the status of Zoology when this Journal 

 was founded by Edward Newman in 1843, and its progress since. 



The Zoological Society had been founded in 1826, and was thus in 

 only the seventeenth year of its existence ; the Entomological Society 

 was but ten years old. The Ray Society was not started till the 

 following year (1844), and is therefore one year younger than ' The 

 Zoologist.' In the year that ' The Zoologist ' first appeared there 

 was published the concluding volume on the Zoology of the Voyage 

 of H. M.S. 'Beagle,' the vessel in which Darwin made his celebrated 

 voyage. Lyell was steadily preparing his ' Travels in North America,' 

 which was published in the early part of 1845. May, 1843, is the 

 published date of the eighteenth and last part of Agassiz' monumental 

 work, ' Recherches sur les Poissons fossiles." In the same year the 

 Rev. W. Kirby was still alive, and a sixth edition (vols. i. and ii.) of 

 his immortal ' Introduction,' with the addition of one hundred MS. 

 pages of new matter, was published. Frank Buckland was at Win- 

 chester College with heart set on becoming a surgeon. Huxley was 

 a student winning prizes. Eight months of this year were occupied 

 by Audubon in his Missouri River journey in the interest of the 

 'Quadrupeds of North America.' The British Museum was under 

 the influence of Panizzi, who this year inaugurated his extensive 

 reforms in the Printed Library. In the epochs of this institution we 

 can pass, according to our purview, from the acquisition of the Mantell 

 Fossils in 1889 to that of the Croizet Fossil-Mammals in 1848. 

 Bloomsbury was then the home of literature. In 1843 Catesby also 

 completed his ' Natural History of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama 

 Islands,' a pioneer work, now seldom consulted amidst the ever 

 increasing literature of North American biology. The voyages of the 

 'Erebus' and 'Terror,' rich in zoological results, terminated this year; 

 John Gould was publishing his magnificent ornithological publications, 

 and in 1843 Lovell Reeve commenced to issue his ' Conchologia 

 Iconica.' In this year was also finished the Second Series of Jardine 



