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of vertebrate animals along these lines — mammals, birds, reptiles, and fish. 
And with this labour is the greater part of these two huge volumes filled. 
The general reader will find a series of engravings arranged as plates 
throughout the volume, which will much help toward putting the ideas of 
the author clearly before him. Each of these represent a division, and 
shows together the animals that are included in it. Mr. Wallace thinks 
them well executed ;• but we do not at all agree with him, for we consider 
them hard, and generally badly drawn. Still, they lend a great interest to 
the work. The maps, which are abundant, are also very valuable ; but 
we think the author’s method of indicating the different degrees of height 
by differences of shading is extremely perplexing, for the distinctions are not 
absolute but gradual, and the confusion resulting from this is very great. 
But even admitting these slight objections, the treatise is one of the 
highest scientific importance; and for ourselves we must express our 
extreme gratitude to the author for his labours — labours executed purely for 
the benefit of science, and which can never be repaid by any monetary 
return they may bring. 
N this important subject we have now before us two works, which, 
though differing in character — the one being an elaborate Report of the 
progress of a single epidemic in America, which extends over more than 
1,000 pages ; the other an equall} r important treatise on Asiatic cholera as 
it presents itself to our notice in India — have yet much that is in common 
between them. We shall take the American volume first. In this most 
valuable Report on the progress of a single epidemic, it is proved conclusively 
that the disease did not arise spontaneously, but was introduced by immigrants 
from European countries. Of course there is a certain amount of evidence 
in this work that tends to an opposite conclusion, but it is almost exclusively 
negative in character ; and where any opinion adverse to the belief in the 
spread of the disease from Europe, and primarily from India, is expressed, 
it is generally the idea of some individual reporter who has had little or no 
experience in the subject. 
Throughout the entire work, which includes the various smaller reports 
of hundreds of physicians, we notice the same features in the history of the 
disease that are presented by every undoubted case of Asiatic cholera. And 
we are glad to observe that the author, or rather the editor of the work, 
points to the extreme importance of attending to the very first symptoms of 
diarrhoea that present themselves. It is really because of the neglect of this 
matter that cholera produces such an intense fatality. We observe that 
these American cases are precisely similar to those which we have seen in 
this country, and those which were unfortunately amply abundant in the East 
* u The Cholera Epidemic of 1873 in the United States.” By John M. 
Woodworth, M.D. Washington: Government Printing Office. 1875. — 
“ A History of Asiatic Cholera.” By C. Macnamara, F.C.U., Surgeon to 
the Westminster Hospital. London : Macmillan & Co. 1876. 
WHAT IS CHOLERA?* 
