236 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



of its natural charms. " What must this estuary have heen like 

 a hundred years ago ? Can we picture it before railways existed 

 on either side, before any serious reclamation had taken place, 

 when there were no puffing, snorting tugs, with their shrill 

 whistles, in the tideway, no clanging steam-hammers or shrieking 

 'devils' at the unbuilt works, &c. — nothing, in short, to disturb 

 the solitude of those endless miles of flat, flat-marsh, and sand- 

 bank." Perhaps in another two thousand years it may have 

 reverted back to its old condition, and the birds come to their 

 own again. Mr. Dockray's contribution will comfort the soul of 

 the sportsman. 



The " Keptiles and Amphibians" are from the pens of Messrs. 

 Coward and Oldham, who have not a wide range in subject. 

 " Although two out of the three British Snakes, the two Lizards, 

 and the Blindworm occur or have occurred within recent years, 

 Cheshire has a remarkably poor reptilian fauna ; no single species 

 can be called common." 



Mr. James Johnstone has undertaken the enumeration of 

 " The Fishe3 of Cheshire and Liverpool Bay," and he has 

 done more by giving an introduction to the physical conditions 

 of the Cheshire sea area, and of the systematic position of the 

 species. However, space forbids further extracts from a more 

 than usually important, interesting, and thorough piece of 

 zoological work. 



Experiments on the Generation of Insects. By Francesco Kedi, 

 of Arezzo. Translated by Mab Bigelow. Chicago : The 

 Open Court Publishing Co. 



The ' Esperienze Intorno alia Generazione degl' Insetti' is 

 now seldom read, and, like its author, almost forgotten. The 

 book was published in 1668, and reached its fifth edition in 1688, 

 from which this translation has been made. A Latin version 

 appeared at Amsterdam in 1671, while Pouchet (1859) makes 

 mention of a French translation. We must put on the scientific 

 equipment of 1668 to understand what this publication really 

 meant at that time, and what the author dared to say at that 

 epoch, though he fought with the foils of Erasmus and escaped 

 persecution. 



