240 
JOURNAL OF MAMMALOGY 
WILD LIFE AND THE MOTOR CAR 
On November 7, 1920, I motored from Austin to San Antonio, Texas, some 82 
miles. On the road, evidently killed by motors travelling by night, were 4 cotton- 
tails, 2 dogs, 2 rats, 1 opossum, and 1 very large skunk. It is remarkable that 
the cottontail commonly suffers more than any other game animal from motor 
cars. — Ernest Thompson Seton, Greenwich, Conn. 
RECENT LITERATURE 
Winge, Herluf. A Review of the Interrelationships of the Cetacea. 
Smithsonian Misc. Coll., vol. 72, no. 8, 97 pp., 1921. [Translated by Gerrit S. 
Miller, Jr., from Vidensk. Medd. fra Dansk naturh. Foren., Copenhagen, vol. 70, 
p. 59-152, 1918.] 
The paper here translated is one of a series of studies by Doctor Winge on 
the orders of mammals. It commences with a brief statement of the supposed 
derivation of the group and an account of the more obvious ways in which the 
structure of cetaceans departs from that of land mammals as a result of a wholly 
aquatic existence. Following this, the major groups of the order are taken up 
in sequence, their chief characters are enumerated, and an attempt is made to 
trace a possible line of evolution for them. 
The earliest known cetaceans appear in the Eocene, already equipped for 
living wholly in the water. They include several genera of zeuglodonts, and 
while some of these — Basilosaurus {‘‘Zeuglodon’’) — had already reached the 
height of their development, there still survived at least one member of the 
group so primitive that the dentition is nearly unchanged from that of one of 
the creodonts (Hyoeriodon). This primitive genus — Protocetus from the Eocene 
of Egypt — is accepted by Winge as in the direct ancestory of the group which 
he calls Zeuglodontidae, though others including its discoverer are not convinced 
that these are true cetaceans. 
At the conclusion of the first half of the paper (p. 45) the author sums up his 
views. He recognizes six families of Cetacea, all of which however are not of 
equivalent value, namely: (1) the “Zeuglodontidae” ( = Basilosauridae) to include 
these Eocene genera which he considers are unquestionably primitive cetaceans, 
and “must have made their appearance somevrhere within the territory occupied 
by the hyaenodonts, and probably in the oldest part of the territory.” (2) The 
Balaenidae, in which he includes all whalebone whales, and believes them to be 
derived “from the more primitive genera” of zeuglodonts, a view at variance 
with that of Abel, who believes the Miocene Patriocetus offers a connecting link 
between toothed and baleen species. Gregory also suggests the comparatively 
recent origin of the group. (3) The Squalodontidae, whose members he would 
have spring “from the most primitive, tooth-bearing balaenids,” a view for which 
it is difficult to see any satisfactory basis. Both True and Abel agree in placing 
the Oligocene Agorophius (for which Abel makes a separate family) as a near 
ancestor of the squalodonts. (4) The Platanistidac, considered “the descendants 
of the primitive squalodonts.” Here are included the four living genera Steno- 
