14 
STATE OF ZOOLOGY 
PRUSSIA. 
Returning from Russia towards Germany, and resting a 
while in Prussia, I behold in her capital a museum, which, 
in many branches, especially in Ornithology, is the richest in 
the world. Its director, Professor Lichtenstein, continues to 
occupy himself chiefly with Mammalia, and with Monographs 
of Aquatic Birds. Wiegmann, the oracle of Erpetology, having 
died without publishing his long expected work on Serpents, I 
am fortunate in possessing his last words of censure against 
those who claiming high authority, make a chaotic confusion 
of species, and his exhortations to their successors to act 
otherwise. With his loss, however, we fortunately have not 
to regret the cessation of his most precious Arcliiv fur Natur- 
geschicte, as Professor Erichson will devote himself with equal 
attention and diligence to that publication. And if the Me- 
moirs of Nathusius on the Sorices, of Keyserling and Blasius 
on the Vespertilionidce, of Krohn on the Metamorphoses and 
Generation of the Sygnathi and Hippocampi, and of Bur- 
meister on the Corneous Integuments of the Tarsi of Passerine 
Birds, which furnish a good method for their classification, 
sufficed to raise that journal to great renown, the no less 
valuable labours of its present editor, wliich are there em- 
bodied, will equally maintain its reputation. This author is 
chiefly devoted to the Invertebrata, while in regard to Ver- 
tehrata, it will suffice to mention the valuable treatise of 
Wagner on the Rodentia. Muller and Henle, names which 
are inseparable, whether they treat of profound anatomical 
doctrines, or of the right determination of distinct species of 
Fish, have completed their work on the Plagiostomi, of which 
the second and concluding fasciculus, that which treats of the 
Raiidce, yields in no respect to that on the Squalidce, which 
has been so universally admired. Henle, moreover, has pub- 
lished independently an important Memoir on the Lingual Ap- 
paratus of Reptiles, compared anatomically. The posthumous 
work of Nitzsch, entitled Pterologia, is continued to be pub- 
lished, and unquestionably supplies new means for classifying 
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