Abstract
THE Insectivora constitute an order of Mammals at the same time but little known and of great scientific interest. Until recently they were not considered an attractive group. Small in size, shy and retiring in habits, difficult of capture, none of them of commercial value or capable of domestication, they have received little notice even from professed zoologists, and to the general public their existence, except in the case of two or three of the commonest species, has been almost unknown. The fact, however, on which Prof. Huxley insisted many years ago, in his lectures at the College of Surgeons, that in this order we find some of the most generalised members of the Eutherian or placental Mammals, little-modified representatives of what appear to be ancestral forms, whose study is an excellent introduction to a. knowledge of the more modified or specialised members of the class, has done much to elevate them in the eyes of naturalists who are seeking the key to unlock the history of the evolution of the Mammalia. Mr Dobson, whose excellent work in the Chiroptera is familiar to all zoologists, has done well then to take up the Insectivora, and to give us, for the first time, a thoroughly reliable and exhaustive monograph upon them.
A Monograph of the Insectivora, Systematic and Anatomical.
By G. E. Dobson Parts I. and II. 4to. Pp. 1–172, 22 Plates. (London: Van Voorst, 1882–83.)
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FLOWER, W. Dobson's “Monograph of the Insectivora” . Nature 29, 282 (1884). https://doi.org/10.1038/029282a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/029282a0