The Vertebrate Animals of Leicestershire and Rutland

Abstract

AS we are informed in the preface, the volume before us is the first complete work treating of the vertebrate fauna of the two counties mentioned in the title, which has hitherto appeared, although scattered notes and a few lists have been published by several writers. The author, who, from his position as Curator of the Town Museum at Leicester, has exceptional opportunities for a work of this nature, can certainly claim that the rcsult of his labours does not err on the side of incompleteness. Thus this volume is not only a record of all the existing species of vertebrates which have been observed within the limits of the counties in question, but likewise includes the fossil forms hitherto described from the same area. The recent and extinct forms are, indeed, arranged together in a systematic manner, without any difference of type or other indication to distinguish at a glance the fauna of the present from that of the past; and it is certainly rather startling, at first sight, to find in a fauna of an English Midland county the dormouse immediately followed by elephants and rhinoceroses. Now, although we are not on the side of those who regard the sciences of zoology and palæontology as separated by a wide gulf, yet we venture to think that in this instance the author would have been better advised had he given his synopsis of extinct types in a separate portion of the volume, after having first dealt with the existing species. Faunas are, indeed, to a very large extent, features of one particular epoch; and when we have those of two or more distinct epochs mixed up together, we tend to lose sight of the peculiar features of each one. The ordinary student of the local distribution of existing English mammals will find that the introduction of a number of extinct types, of which he knows nothing, tends to distract his attention from the observations regarding the local distribution of the living forms. Fortunately, indeed, this objection does not apply to the birds, in which no extinct forms are recorded.

The Vertebrate Animals of Leicestershire and Rutland.

By Montagu Browne. Pp. 223, illustrated. (Birmingham and Leicester, 1889.)