666 Recent Literature. [August, 



the ivory collectors had, when this traveler visited the spot, for 

 eighty years made their best tusk harvest." Associated with 

 the remains of the mammoth, well preserved carcasses of two 

 species of hairy rhinoceros have been found. The last one found 

 was an exceedingly well preserved carcass of a hairy species 

 {Rhinoceros mcrckii Jaeger) discovered on a tributary of the 

 Lena, in 1877. "From the find Schrenck draws the conclu- 

 sion that this rhinoceros belonged to a high-northern species, 

 adapted to a cold climate, and living in, or at least occasionally 

 wandering to, the regions where the carcass was found. There the 

 mean temperature of the year is now very low, the winter ex- 

 ceedingly cold ( — 63 "2 has been registered) and the short sum- 

 mer exceedingly warm. Nowhere on earth does the temperature 

 show extremes so widely separated as here. Although the trees 

 in winter often split with tremendous noise, and the ground is 

 rent with the cold, the wood is luxuriant and extends to the 

 neighborhood of the Polar sea, where, besides, the winter is much 

 milder than farther in the interior. With respect to the possibility 

 of these large animals finding sufficient pasture in the regions in 

 question, it ought not to be overlooked that in sheltered places 

 overflowed by the spring inundation there are found, still far 

 north of the limit of trees, luxuriant bushy thickets, whose newly 

 expanded juicy leaves, burned up by no tropical sun, perhaps 

 form a special luxury for grass-eating animals." The account of 

 the discovery, by the Vega expedition, of several skeletons of 

 Steller's manatee on Bering island, has already been noticed in 

 this journal. 



It is a 



Huxley's The Crayfish. 1 — This is one of Professor Huxley s 

 most effective works. The crayfish has received repeated atten- 

 tion from naturalists ; some of the best memoirs by the most 

 eminent naturalists have been devoted to the natural history, the 

 embryology and anatomy as well as histology of the crayfish, but 

 so far from being a compilation from these authorities, the work 

 before us is a fresh, original study of a well known and most 

 accessible animal, and the subject, as may be expected, is treated 

 in the methods of to-day ; not only from a special point of view, 

 but from the modern broad standpoint of the relations of the 

 crayfish to the world about it and to the fossil forms allied to it. 

 Should we want to give one some idea of modern zoology ,n ' ' 

 widest sense, the methods of study and the ultimate questions 

 arising out of any special zoological work, we should put tins 

 little monograph in the student's hands. 



' "" 

 1 >. Appletoa & Co., 1880. i2mo, pp. 371- *i-75- 



