10 
STATE OF ZOOLOGY 
still continue to be published. The Library of Natural His- 
tory, edited by Sir W. Jardine, continues to flourish with the 
progress of science ; and among its many merits, I consider 
the greatest to be, that it favours the diffusion of knowledge, 
by the low price at which these learned and elegant treatises, 
adorned with excellent coloured figures, may be purchased. 
This eulogium is fully justified by the latest volumes, including 
those of Hamilton Smith on Dogs and Horses, and especially 
that of Waterhouse on the Marsupials. The zoological 
volumes of the Library of Entertaining Knowledge are no 
less deserving of praise, as well as the learned ones of Lard- 
ner's Oyclopcedia, and the articles scattered, alphabetically, 
by the pen of a Broderip, in the widely circulated Penny 
Cyclopaedia^ which has served as a model to so many similar 
works. 
SWEDEN. 
Sweden has not departed from the station to which Lin- 
naeus raised her. In the department of Vertebrata (to which, 
as you are aware, I confine this sketch), her eminence is 
worthily sustained by Professor Nilsson, who occupies himself 
with equal success in all the four classes, and has shown him- 
self a complete master of each, in his Fauna Scandinavica. 
This work is unfortunately written in the Swedish language, 
which is very unfavourable to the diffusion which it deserves, 
and the same is also the case with his other work, the Illu- 
minade Figurer till Skandinaviens Fauna. That author has 
informed me, that he is also preparing a special work on the 
Pliocidce, of which he has carefully studied the specimens pre- 
served in the museums of Berlin, London, and Paris. Nor 
can I pass hy a valuable letter, which he has lately written to 
me, in which he clearly proves, that the Lepus timidus of Lin- 
naeus, and more particularly the species described in the 
^ Fauna Suecica, is not the common hare of the continent of 
Europe, which does not occur in Scandinavia at all, but is 
the Lepus variabilis of Pallas, as is clearly shown, by the 
phrase oestate cinereus hyeme semper albus, and especially by 
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