PREFACE. 
A Prerace to the yearly volume of ‘ The Zoologist’ pertains 
to an annual stock-taking, for it must be judged largely by our 
contributors’ additions to zoological knowledge. 
The Mammalia have received special attention. The paper 
by Prof. J. C. Ewart on ‘‘ Zebra-Horse Hybrids” may prove to 
be of an epoch-making nature both in Africa and India. The 
Indian fauna has again asserted its interest, while Mr. Oldfield 
Thomas has proposed a canon of nomenclature for British 
mammals. On the species of our own fauna many valuable 
notes have appeared. 
The class Aves still remains the favourite study of very many 
of our contributors, and our pages have again contained new 
facts in British Ornithology. Mr. Ernst Hartert has called 
attention to an ‘‘ hitherto overlooked British bird”’ in a Marsh 
Tit, Parus salicarius, Bream. The presence of the White Wag- 
tail (Motacilla alba) in Ireland, the Pectoral Sandpiper (Tringa 
maculata) in Norfolk and Kent, the Barred Warbler (Sylvia 
misoria) in Lincolnshire, the continued visitation of the Melo- 
dious Warbler (Hypolais polyglotta) in South Devon, and the 
nesting of the Nightingale so far west as Wells in Somerset, are 
among some of the many avian records we have received and 
published. 
Reptilia and Pisces have not been neglected, and we are glad 
to see the Crustacea more prominent on our literary menu. The 
Stalk-eyed Crustacea of Great Yarmouth, and the Malacostracous 
Crustacea of a section of Australia have been detailed ; while a 
note on “The Struggle for Existence among Hermit Crabs” 
shows the vast interest attaching to observations on the lives of 
_ these creatures. The same remark applies to the Arachnida, on 
