SCIENTIFIC SUMMARY. 
305 
Now it is with regard to these wandering birds that Captain Moore’s 
tables are particularly interesting, for he indicates their distribution in other 
countries, and, in the case of migrants, the time of the year in which they 
are met with elsewhere, thus bringing into a very convenient form for 
reference a great body of information upon all matters connected with the 
geographical distribution and migrations of our British birds. Thus, if we 
take a common and well-known species, such as the martin, we get the fol- 
lowing information about it in a single line — it occurs in summer throughout 
the British islands and all over the Continent of Europe, is a bird of passage 
in the islands of the Mediterranean, occurs in summer in Iceland and the 
Faroe Islands, is a rare resident and winter visitant in Palestine, occurs in 
southern Siberia in summer, in the north-west of India and in Arabia, and 
in Egypt, Nubia, and Abyssinia in the winter. In northern Africa it is also 
of course a bird of passage. In like manner with other species the whole 
distributional history of each is indicated by a few symbols and letters placed 
in the respective columns under the heads of the different countries inhabited 
or visited by the birds. The book is in fact a tabulated summary of those 
points in the Natural History of British Birds which, although of great im- 
portance to the ornithologist, will most easily slip his memory, and the 
author’s labour in preparing it, which must have been very considerable, 
ought to earn for him the gratitude of his fellow-students. 
THE HUMAN SPECIES.* 
A NATURAL History of Man, written by M. de Quatrefages, forms the 
twenty-sixth volume of the International Scientific Series, and we 
need hardly say that, like everything that comes from the pen of its distin- 
guished author, this little work is excellent. M. de Quatrefages, as is well- 
inown, is a strong monogenist in anthropology, and he devotes considerable 
space here to the development of his views upon the question of the unity or 
diversity of the species of man, which he settles, of course, in favour of the 
former. The main argument, naturally, is the unlimited fertility of the 
human races inter se, and the continued fertility of the crossed races, which 
certainly goes far enough to prove that the differentiation between the races 
has not advanced to the production of “ physiological species.” In connec- 
tion with the question of the origin of mankind, the author also submits the 
doctrine of evolution to examination, and comes to a decision adverse to the 
acceptance of any such idea to account for the origin of species, upon grounds 
which do not appear to us to be of very great weight. The main objections 
raised by M. de Quatrefages to the doctrine of evolution, or, more properly, 
to the more advanced developments of Darwinism, are, that its upholders 
generally give no clear definition of what they understand by a “ species ; ” 
and, secondly, that they cannot or will not say “ they do not know,” and 
therefore are inclined to assume that certain things have happened in accor- 
dance with the requirements of their theory, when it is quite possible that 
* “ The Human Species.” By A. de Quatrefages. 8vo. London : 0. Kegan 
Paul & Co., 1879. 
NEW SERIES, TOL. III. — NO. XI. X 
