Abstract
IF we may judge by the first number, of which we have received a copy from the publishers, this new natural history bids fair to eclipse all publications of a similar nature by the number and beauty of its coloured plates. The name of the Director of the Paris Museum of Natural History is a sufficient guarantee that the text will be all that it should be; while the fact that the coloured plates are from sketches by Herr W. Kuhnert testifies that from both the artistic and the realistic points of view they will have few rivals. The authorship of the sections devoted to mammals and birds has been entrusted to Dr. H. Menegaux, who, in the part before us, treats in a popular, but at the same time exact, manner of the apes, monkeys and lemurs. No less than eighty coloured plates, as we learn from the title-page, are to be assigned to the illustration of the mammals, and of these, nine appear in the present part of 124 pages. All are first-class examples of three-colour printing, and we believe that such a wealth of illustration has never before appeared in a popular natural history. In addition to the coloured plates, the part before us contains a large number of text-figures, all reproduced from pen-and-ink sketches by Herr Kuhnert. As the publishers state in their prospectus, such illustrations are far superior, both from the artistic and the zoological aspects, to reproductions from photographs drawn from miscellaneous sources, which are generally out of harmony with one another and too often fail to display the characteristic features of the animals they represent. We notice that the author refuses to accept modern innovations in nomenclature, retaining, for instance, the familiar Mycetes (in place of Alouatta) for the howling monkeys. One of the main arguments used by the advocates of such changes was that it would conduce to uniformity; but experience seems to suggest that it will have exactly the contrary effect, and if so, where is the justification for such changes?
La Vie des Animaux illustrée.
By E. Perrier. Pp. xxviii + 124. (Paris: Baillière et Fils, n.d.) Price Fr. 6.
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L., R. La Vie des Animaux illustrée . Nature 67, 342 (1903). https://doi.org/10.1038/067342a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/067342a0