NOTICES OF NEW BOORS. 79 



those of us who were once there, but without a publication like 

 the present, which would have supplied a long-felt want. We 

 trust that Mr. Sclater will soon produce his second volume. 



The Crocodillans, Lizards^ and Snakes of North America. By 

 Edward Dkinker Cope, A.M., Ph.D. Ann. Rept. Smith- 

 sonian Institution, 1898 (1900). Washington : Government 

 Printing Office. 



The principal portion of the pages of this last report — just 

 received — is occupied by a posthumous communication by the 

 late Dr. Cope, which extends over one thousand pages, is fully 

 illustrated, and is a worthy legacy by a great palaeontologist and 

 evolutionist now no longer with us. As is well known. Dr. Cope 

 held his own views on evolution, and was neither swayed by 

 modern theories, nor influenced by opinions which had obtained 

 a present currency but not necessarily the assurance of a future 

 canonization. It is not our province to advocate his evolutionary 

 views; it is, however, our duty to more or less express them. In 

 this treatise they are not too pronounced, and may be found in 

 his preface. In these days, when it is the vogue to express 

 generic resemblances as always due to the phenomenon of mimicry, 

 it is perhaps well to remember that the explanation is at least 

 of not universal acceptance. Thus Dr. Cope writes : — " I long 

 since pointed out that generic characters may, and in fact 

 generally do, arise in the process of evolution quite independently 

 of the specific, so that certain species of different genera resemble 

 each other in the so-called '* natural," that is, specific characters, 

 more than they do other species of their own genus. ... It 

 is not, then, remarkable that sometimes one or more species of 

 two or more genera should parallel each other." 



It would, however, be a misrepresentation to lead a reader 

 or student to suppose that this publication is of a speculative 

 character. It is, on the contrary, a very fully descriptive mono- 

 graph on the Crocodilians, Lizards, and Snakes of North America, 

 in which the taxonomic features far exceed the bionomic details, 

 and absolutely supplant theoretic speculations. It is, however, 

 rare to find any zoological publication without some information 

 that supports or minimises some evolutionary conceptions. 



