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THE AMERICAN NATURALIST. [Vol. XXXV I II. 



of a saunterer among New England's woods and fields. They record 

 the aspects of the changing seasons from March to December with 

 eyes which, in turn, are those of a lover of plants and birds, a poet, 

 and a deeply religious man. For science he cares little, as compared 

 with " the intuition of spirit " ; Emerson and Whitman are more to him 

 than Darwin and Wallace. The letters are not full of accurate detail 

 like Thoreau, nor of vivid coloring like BoUes ; the style is often too 

 involved and the 'thought too mystical to suggest comparison with 

 Burroughs; but coming as they did from week to week, they must 

 have been very welcome to many who could not share the author's 

 rambles ; they breathe the calmness, the toleration, the kindly sym- 

 pathy of a true lover of out-door nature. 



ZOOLOGY. 



Influence of Man on the Distribution of Reptiles and Mammals 

 in Patagonia and Fuegia.— In a very complimentary review^ of my 

 recently published Narrative of the Princeton Patagonia Expeditions, 

 Mr. Barnum Brown, who, as a representative of the American Museum 

 of Natural History in New York accompanied me on my last expedi- 

 tion to that country remarks that my " observations on lizards should 

 have been confined to that part of Patagonia north of the Rio Santa 

 Cruz, for this river forms the natural southern boundary line for liz- 

 ards as well as armadillos though a few have been scattered south of 

 It by man." I have taken these small reptiles at Fitzroy's Springs 

 on the north shore of the Gallegos river, at various points along 

 the coast between Cape Fairweather and Coy Inlet, about the Sak 

 lagoons at the estancia of Montes and Fernandez ten miles from 

 Gallegos, at the Mount of Observation and at Greenwood's estancia 

 sixty miles south of Santa Cruz and have observed them at many 

 other favorable localities in the region south of the Santa Cruz 

 River, while other travellers have repoi-ted them as being common 

 not only in this region but on the plains of Fuegia as well. See 

 Popper's account of Fuegia in Mulhall's Hand-Book of the Rivet 

 Plate. I see no good reason for attributing the present wide 

 distribution of these lizards over the region south of the Santa Cruz 

 Kiver to the agency of man. 



^Amer. Nat., Nov. 1903, pp. 799-800. 



