Rcce?it Literature. 



[January, 



There are, in Mivart's opinion, fifty species of living cats, but 

 he thinks that some of these may turn out to be mere varieties, 

 and some forms regarded in this book as varieties, may possibly 

 prove to be really distinct species, especially when we consider 

 the South American spotted cats, the ocelots and margays, as 

 well as the smaller cats of China and neighboring regions. 



The fossil species are then considered, especially those from 

 the Tertiaries of France and North America, made known to us 

 by Gervais, Filhol, Cope and Leidy. 



In the discussion on the cat's place in nature, after a too long 



effort to show that the cat is not a plant, but an animal and a car- 

 nivorous one, the author reasons by exclusion, and shows, what 

 nobody will dispute, that the cat's place in nature is as " a mem- 

 ber of the typical genus of the typical family of carnivorous pla- 

 cental mammals," mammals being what our author somewhat 

 clumsily terms " the suck giving, tied-brained class of back-boned 



The fourteenth chapter is on " the cat's hexicology." The gen- 

 tle reader is here informed that this is not a new organ or quality 

 of the cat, but simply is a word coined by the author and substi- 

 tuted for what seems to us a much better expression, the study of 

 the environment. The study of all the " complex relations to time, 

 space, physical forces, other organisms, and to surrounding con- 

 ditions generally, constitute the science of hexicology" But if 



