188 
JOURNAL OP MAMMALOGY 
RECENT LITERATURE 
Goldman, Edward A. Mammals of Panama. Smithsonian Misc. Coll., vol. 
69, no. 5, pp. 1-309, text figures 1-24, pis. 1-39. 1920. 
Goldman’s “Mammals of Panama” is an excellent summary of existing 
knowledge of the mammal fauna of one of the most interesting portions of tropi- 
cal America, interesting not only on account of its varied topography and con- 
sequent diverse conditions of environment, but especially from its geographic 
position, “forming as it does a slender artery blending the complex elements or 
converging life currents of two continents, through which countless migrations of 
non-volant terrestrial animals probably passed during the Tertiary or early 
Quaternary ages.” The work is based primarily on the author’s personal explor- 
ations and field work, for which he was detailed from the Bureau of Biological 
Survey, United States Department of Agriculture, in December, 1910, in coop- 
eration with other departments of the Government in a Biological Survey of the 
Panama Canal Zone under the auspices of the Smithsonian Institution. Mr. 
Goldman’s explorations were made in the Canal Zone and in eastern Panama, 
where he prosecuted field work for about six months in 1911, and for about the 
same period in 1912, devoting his attention mainly to mammals and birds. He 
has, however, availed himself in the preparation of this report on the mammals 
of all the mammal material obtained in Panama, both prior and subsequent to 
his own explorations, contained in American museums, and has thus been able to 
correlate the published results of other workers through a critical examination 
of the actual specimens on which their results were based. Fortunately for the 
completeness of his monograph, he has been able to utilize much of the material 
obtained by J. H. Batty (now in the American Museum of Natural History) and 
that of W. W. Brown, collected for the Bangs Brothers (now in the Museum of 
Comparative Zoology at Cambridge) in western Panama (province of Chiriqui 
and the Coiba and Perlas Islands), and the collections made by H. E. Anthony 
and W. B. Richardson in southeastern Panama for the American Museum of 
Natural History in 1914 and 1915. This, with a few other smaller collections 
available for examination forms a large total, but still, says the author, “Explora- 
tion of mountain ranges between the Canal Zone and the lofty Volcan de Chiriqui 
would add much to our knowledge of the distribution of many mountain mam- 
mals now known only from the extreme eastern or western parts of the republic.” 
The general introduction contains the author’s itineraries and a summary of 
other explorations (pp. 4-18) followed by an account of the physiography and 
climatology (pp. 19-23), and a discussion of the faunal relations and life zones of 
Panama. The mammalian fauna of Panama, as a whole, “is South American 
in the sense that most of the genera and many of the species are common to both 
regions.” The eastern and western parts present important faunal differences, 
the eastern being “more truly South American, especially the mountainous 
parts, while western Panama partakes of the character of the Central American 
subregion.” That the Canal Zone tends “to delimit faunas is indicated by the 
distribution of various species.” 
Three life zones are recognized: (1) a Lower Tropical, (2) an Upper Tropical, 
and (3) a Temperate. The Lower Tropical Zone is an area of high temperature 
and includes “by far the greater part of the Isthmian land surface from the 
