152 Recent Literature. 
tured in vice, and their maturity is crime. Our good people 
should refrain from indiscriminate alms giving, for this is offering 
a premium for a continuance of present conditions, and our laws 
should recognize the existence of heredity and make provision 
whereby the reproduction of this inherited vice could be checked. 
Such laws may seem harsh, but consider for a moment the saving 
to the country had the notorious Margaret, the mother of the 
Jukes family, been imprisoned so that none of her illegitimate chil- 
dren could have come into the world. Such a step would have been 
deemed cruel, but in the light of what we now know of the crimi- 
nality of her descendants, society would have been justified in such 
extreme measures. The record of her children is but a continuous 
account of murder, highway robbery, burglary and prostitution, 
while the cost of prosecuting these criminals mounts up into the 
hundreds of thousands of dollars. 
RECENT LITERATURE. 
Thomas' Catalogue of Marsupialia and Monotremata.^— 
This publication is very timely, as it places in the hands of students 
the means of becoming acquainted with the characters of the species 
of the important orders named, at a time when it is important that 
they should have the knowledge. The Marsupialia are ar- 
ranged in six families, of which three are referred to the Diproto- 
dontia, and three to the Polyprotodontia. The species number as 
follows : 
Diprotodontia. Polyprotodontia. 
Macropodidas. 56 Peramelidae, 14 
Totals. 93 Totals. 64=157 
The systematic treatment is conservative, and in the main satis- 
factory. Tarsipes seems, however, to deserve family recognition. 
In the matter of species the novel proposition is maintained that the 
larger South American opossums are only variations of the species 
with which we are familiar in this country. Didelphys cancrivora, 
aurita, azarce, and albiventris become synonymous of D. marsupialis 
L. {=D.vtrgintana Kerr). 
* Catalogue < 
