The Geography of Mammals

Abstract

THIS work may be best described as being of an extremely conservative nature; so conservative indeed that the authors seem under the impression that scarcely any improvement or alteration in views advanced many years ago can by any possibility be rendered necessary through the general progress of science and the work achieved by other investigators. It may likewise be described as a unionist production, for, in addition to the names of the two authors which appear on the title-page, we are told in the preface that two other gentlemen have assisted in the compilation of the lists of genera. Unfortunately, although there has doubtless been “a union of hearts,” a union of pens is conspicuous by its absence; so that, as will be shown in the course of this notice, there are many glaring incongruities between different portions of the work, while the want of correspondence in the nomenclature employed can scarcely be designated as anything less than appalling.

The Geography of Mammals.

By W. L. P. L. Sclater. Pp. xviii + 335. Illustrated. (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, and Co., Ltd., 1899.)