236 THE ZOOLOGIST. 
the great desirability of having the views of the closet naturalist 
tested by competent field observers”; and, again: ‘“‘ The most 
conspicuous colors of nature, for instance, are, under ordinary 
circumstances, black and white. Yet we continually find black, 
and sometimes white, animals thriving as well as their more 
dull-coloured compeers under conditions that certainly seem as 
if they ought to favor the latter.” 
Mr. Selous’s chapters i. and il. may be carefully read and 
pondered by some of the enthusiastic missioners in the ultra 
cult of ‘‘protective coloration,’ ‘‘recognition marks,” and 
‘‘mimicry.” Not that these theories are repudiated so much as 
largely qualified, and this is the philosophical position. The 
argument in their favour was originally one of possibility, which 
rightly developed into probability ; but by the vogue in which 
these interesting problems have been received, and the extremes 
to which they have been pushed, they are rapidly being rele- 
gated into the domain of unlikelihood. And this is the pity 
of it. 
A Guide to the Elephants (Recent and Fossil) Exhibited in the 
Department of Geology and Paleontology in the British 
Museum (Natural History). Printed by Order of the 
Trustees. 
Tuts is another of those useful little handbooks by which a 
visitor to our National Museum may acquire a thorough know- 
ledge of the few animals to which it rightly claims to be a 
‘Guide. It is written by that well-known paleontologist, 
Dr. C. W. Andrews, and is, in fact, a short and handy mono- 
graph of the Proboscidea. We believe that these booklets are 
of the highest educational value to those visitors who wish to 
know not only the names and position of the preserved animals 
they see, but also their history in time. For a lesson on the 
process of animal evolution the Proboscidea afford a splendid 
text, and we would suggest that this inexpensive ‘Guide’ might 
be placed in the hands of schoolboys, who, after having read 
it, should be taken to the Museum to see the subject of its 
pages, which might afterwards be reperused. The evolutionary 
conception by this and similar means would be clearly attained, 
