1877.] Recent Literature. ` 355 
observer of nature, and we congratulate ourselves upon the acquisition of 
so careful, so thorough, and so reliable a treatise. 
We do not take the present occasion for any elaborate review of the 
work, in which to track after statements with the view of verifying or 
criticising particulars; we wish rather simply to point out the general 
character of the work, and bring its high average of merit and reliabil- 
ity prominently into view. The work is open to serious criticism in 
the matter of the classification which the author has seen fit to adopt, 
Scandinavian Elk. 
: (Fre. 67.) 
and we doubt that his views on this portion of the subject are sound, 
from a purely scientific stand-point, or that they will receive the coun- 
tenance of professed therologists. But we do not think that this criti- 
sm will in the least disturb the author, who seems to have aimed at 
Some convenient arrangement of the ruminants, by which the relations 
5 of the species he treats may be readily recognized, rather than any form- 
al Presentation of the technics of the case. And we would immedi- 
ately add that his elaborate, minute, and faithful descriptions of the spe- 
cles put us in possession of exactly the facts that we should most wish for 
