Notices of New Books. 



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Notices of New Books. 



c On the Zoology of Ancient Europe' By Alfred Newton, M.A., 

 Fellow of Magdalene College, Cambridge, F.L.S., &c. Mac- 

 millan & Co., London and Cambridge. 1862. 



An essay of great interest : it contains a considerable amount of 

 reliable information, arranged with some judgment, but not me- 

 thodically. The author seems perfectly aware of this : he assures 

 us he " well knows that his remarks are too discursive :" they cer- 

 tainly would have been more useful to the closet naturalist had they 

 been somewhat more carefully arranged : in fact there seems to be no 

 arrangement, either chronological, geographical or zoological. I 

 think perhaps in a popular lecture this discursive manner may have 

 its advantages ; the touch-and-go style is often used to prevent the 

 attention from flagging : but we have here an essay filled with abbre- 

 viated references, and assuming, to say the least of it, to be a scien- 

 tific production ; and in such we are apt to expect something in the 

 way of method. Again, I should have preferred a somewhat deeper 

 research into reputed facts ; for instance, in the case of the lion, 

 which Mr. Newton claims as a native of Europe, it would have been 

 most delightful to have found conclusive evidence of his former 

 sojourn amongst us ; but Mr. Newton's researches, in the first place ; 

 show that in Asia the tiger ascends northward to latitude 52°, and 

 that hence we may conclude the lion would bear the climate of 

 Europe ; and, in the second place, we are referred back to our school- 

 books, and there we shall find that the skin of the lion was a trophy 

 of Hercules, and that Herodotus tells us there were lions in Thrace 

 in the days of Xerxes : here is the passage entire ; the conclusion 

 therefrom, that lions were indigenous to Europe, appears to me very 

 like a non sequitur : — 



" I claim without hesitation for the king of beasts a place in the 

 Fauna of Ancient Europe. We are disposed at first sight to consider 

 the presence of the larger Carnivora as confined to the tropical or 

 quasi-tropical regions of the globe. Allow me to say that this is a 

 very great error. I pass over extinct species, such as the Machaero- 

 dus or the Felis spelaea, whose relics the unwearied researches of the 

 late Dr. Buckland unequivocally detected in Kent's Hole and the 

 Kirkdale Caverns ; for we know not the climatic conditions under 

 which those formidable creatures once existed in this country. But 

 VOL. XX. 3 A 



