32 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS. 



Index Animalium ; sive index nominum quce ab a.d. MDCCLVIII. 

 generibus et speciebus animalium imposita sunt," &c. A 

 Carolo Davies Sherborn, confectus. Cambridge Uni- 

 versity Press. 



In these pages (vol. v. p. 39), we drew attention to this great 

 work, then in progress ; the first volume is now before us, 

 consisting of about 1250 pages, and containing some 60,000 

 referential entries. The objects of the work, as set forth in the 

 preface, are ' (a) to provide zoologists with a complete list of all 

 the generic and specific names that have been applied by authors 

 to animals since Jan. 1st, 1758; (b) to give an exact date for 

 each page quotation ; (c) to give a quotation for each reference 

 sufficiently exact to be intelligible alike to the specialist and to 

 the layman." 



How is it possible to review or write a general notice of this 

 giant undertaking ? ; how few can realize the value of what to an 

 outsider will appear 60,000 bald references ? ; and what still fewer 

 readers can appraise the awful labour and bibliographical capacity 

 that makes such a publication practicable ? It is absolutely the 

 life of a man surrendered to the cause of zoology in one of its 

 most real, but certainly least popular aspects — assuredly not 

 a usual method of to-day. And yet this is one of the most 

 important zoological publications in recent years, it makes a 

 mighty concordance for the use of specialists, and affords a vade 

 mecum in zoological technics. In the present study of scientific 

 bibliography we are often hindered by the proposed reforms in 

 nomenclature by writers who correct their predecessors to-day 

 and again themselves to-morrow, in fact the subject has been 

 not less neglected by qualified students than obscured by a 

 plague of commenting flies. We have now what we may call a 

 rabbinical index to the scientific names proposed for animals, 

 one that will be accepted, as the last word on an abstruse and 



