A History of British Quadrupeds

Abstract

THIS excellent work having originally appeared in 1839, a second edition in 1874 deserves more than a passing notice. Ina country like our own, which has been well populated for so many centuries, and in which the people are increasing at a rate only possible in connection with vast strides in our knowledge of sanitary laws, it is not difficult to form several deductions with regard to the nature of the changes which must be taking place in its fauna, together with their ultimate tendencies. As time progresses, works on the zoology of our island, now not many in number, nor large in size, must dwindle to the proportions of those that might be written on a country like China, in which by degrees nearly every wild species has been exterminated. As there, form after form must die out, giving place to the increase in numbers of the one dominant species, man; till in time a history of British quadrupeds will be better studied from the works of Hume and Lingard than from those of White and Bell, These and other considerations make it a question of more than ordinary importance what stress is to be laid, in scientific investigation, either for the purpose of classification or of minute study on the present geographical distribution of animals. On all sides we see remarks which show most clearly that their authors do not fully realise the true bearing of distribution. They think that it is in opposition to the Darwinian hypothesis; that the camel being found in Africa and Asia, whilst its only close ally, the llama, is a native of the Andes, is a significant fact in favour of the doctrine of “special creation,”and the tapirs of Sumatra and South America, only, point in the same direction. But when we begin to realise how the whole fauna of countries can be and have been wholly changed within the extremely brief geologic time of man's existence, and that most palæontological evidence is in the same direction, it is clear that the stress which must be laid on the present distribution of any particular form is not so great as might have been imagined from the results obtained by earlier workers on the subject.

A History of British Quadrupeds.

By Thomas Bell Second Edition. (Van Voorst).