1885.| Recent Literature, 57 
took the sensible view that “such hideous and unmeaning forms 
only tend to bring scientific nomenclature into contempt.” The 
venerable Professor Westwood further remarked that “ it was 
puzzling to imagine how any educated man (vel doctus, vel doctor) 
could deliberately write, much less print, such names; and still 
more, how any scientific society could allow them to appear in 
their transactions.” 
No editor or publication committee should allow such gro- 
tesque absurdities to go into print; and even then such barbar- 
isms should be expunged; not to throw out such names, what- 
ever nomenclatural codes are in vogue, is, we submit, an unpar- 
donable leniency. 
The numbers of the AMERICAN NATURALIST for 1884 
were issued at the following dates: January, Dec. 29, 1883; 
February, Jan. 21st; March, Feb. 17th; April, March 15th; 
May, April 19th; June, May 17th; July, June 17th; August, 
July 17th ; September, August 15th ; October, Sept. 15th; No- 
vember, Oct. 20th ; December, Nov. 19th. 
RECENT LITERATURE. 
MERRIAM’s MAMMALS OF THE ADIRONDACK REGION *—This well- 
written, elegantly printed volume is essentially a fresh and orig- 
inal contribution to the- zoology of the Mammalia. Though re- 
stricted to the mammals of a limited area, the species have a . wide 
geographical range, and the results of so ‘much close observation, 
through a period of so many years, by a close and critical stu- 
dent, will be of permanent value. Sportsmen and naturalists will 
be under obligations to Dr. Merriam for this volume. It is purely 
biographical, with no descriptive or anatomical details. More- 
over the matter is well presented, and will be found attractive, as 
we have pes > know, to boys interested in wood and field 
sports and na 
The ok i is in the line of Audubon’s Quadrupeds and God- 
man’s American Natural History; with these works as a basis, 
the future student of mammals will, from work of this kind, be 
led more to the comparative study of coloration, of protective 
mimicry, of sexual selection and of instinctive and reasoning 
acts. 
1 The Mammals do the Adirondack region, Northeastern New York. With an in- 
troductory chapter treating of the location and boundaries of the region, its 
cal reste topogrepij, climate, general features, botany and nd position. _ 
CLINTON HART MERRIAM, M.D. Published by the author, Sept., I ka 
printed rom vole I candids Il, ' Transactions Linnean Society, New York. Roy. 8vo, 
PpP- 3! 
