The Zoologist/4th series, vol 3 (1899)/Issue 696/Notices of New Books
NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS.
Dr. P.L. Sclater has made the problem of the geographical distribution of animals peculiarly his own. By a circumstance which seldom occurs to most specialists, his son has inherited his tastes, and shares his studies on the subject. Most zoologists will have read, or at all events be cognizant of, the latter's papers on the Geography of Mammals published in 'The Geographical Journal' (1894-97), while Dr. Sclater's communication "On the Distribution of Marine Mammalia" appeared in these pages (1897, pp. 217-28). These together are now republished, with many illustrations and some additional matter.
This branch of zoological science in its present conception is inseparable with this country and the present century. Dr. Prichard, in his memorable 'Researches into the Physical History of Mankind,' was one of the first to give a reasonable working hypothesis. This was followed by Swainson in his 'Geography and Classification.' In 1857 Dr. Sclater proposed his divisions as applied to Birds before the Linnean Society, which was further elaborated and upheld at the Bristol Meeting of the British Association in 1875. Wallace in the main adopted these views, and they are now generally accepted, subject, of course, to some criticism in detail incidental to all widely accepted generalizations.
The main divisions or regions are mostly maintained in the sense originally proposed, though some qualification is to be found in the sub-regions. This is to be particularly noticed in the Ethiopian region, in which the Cape sub-region now includes "the whole country as far north as Angola on the west, and up to the Tana river on the east," and may probably in time be made to include Somaliland as well. Many zoologists have advocated the union of the Palæarctic and Nearctic regions from the similarity, or rather the many similarities, to be found in their faunas, but the Sclaters argue that these affinities are only of recent origin, and that "palæontological evidence seems to show that, out of all the four regions embraced under the term 'Arctogœa,'[1] the North American or Nearctic Region was the first to be separated from the main mass, and that the similarity is a comparatively modern element in the character of the two faunas."
It is unnecessary to refer to the most original contribution to this volume, in the chapter on the Distribution of Marine Mammals, for, as before mentioned, this article has already appeared in these pages. Now that the Terrestrial and Marine Mammals have been treated on the Sclaterian method, we may hope that the other orders may be studied and published in the same manner. Of the fifty illustrations contained in the text, no fewer than forty have been designed by T. Smit for this work; there are also eight coloured maps; and the volume may be well accepted, so far as Mammals are concerned, and for a long time to come, as the last authoritative statement on the subject.
The study of Prehistoric Man was once completely relegated to the domain of Archæology: it is now no longer neglected by the historian. It is one of the greatest benefits arising from the evolutionary method in the proper study of Zoology, that both Embryology and Palæontology are now considered of primary importance if we wish to understand the problem of present animal existence. Science to-day is more interested in the past than in the future of animal life, and when we really know the first we may perhaps be able in some sense to predicate the second. It is the hither that will guide us to the whither. As we read these pages, commencing with the speculative Palæozoic Conodonts, and arrive at the Pliocene Pithecanthropus erectus, we feel that we are contemplating an era of which as yet so little is known, and of which so much more must yet be told. The chances against finding organic remains are innumerable; "every item of knowledge acquired may indeed be literally described as owing to a chapter of accidents"; to the palaeontologist the knowledge of the past must often seem to be as carefully guarded as the portals of the future. And yet, with all the "imperfection of the geological record," palæontological interpreters—among whom will always be mentioned Owen and Marsh—have given a knowledge which may without offence be designated as a revelation.
With the fascination incidental to the study of a past era and an unseen fauna, caution is a first and last word, in fact, the alpha and omega of palæontological speculation. Mr. Woodward is careful to explain that, "owing to the imperfection of the geological record and the incomplete exploration of most formations, any statement now formulated may eventually prove to be quite a partial account of the facts, and every conclusion must be more or less provisional and tentative"; while "the known facts of geology are still too few to restore the life-provinces of the globe at the various stages of its past history." This is a good book for the zoological library; it may be, as the author modestly suggests, "an elementary handbook," but at the same time it conveys an indispensable information which by many zoologists is necessarily possessed in a more than elementary manner.
The Butterflies and larger Moths of New Zealand have now procured a satisfactory treatment, and by the aid of this fully illustrated work it is possible to form a conception of the interesting but modest lepidopteral fauna of "Te Ika a Maui." In 1855 the missionary Richard Taylor, in his account of the islands, gave us a few coloured figures of the butterflies and moths found there; Butler subsequently figured the Rhopalocera, whilst Meyrick has described and enumerated very many of the Heterocera, so that the time was ripe for a fully illustrated monograph. Mr. Hudson is a conscientious follower of Meyrick's views in classification, and this is the first time we have seen that proposed arrangement followed of the butterflies being included between the Notodontina and the Psychina—in other words, immersed in the moths.
In the introduction Mr. Hudson discusses most of the modern theories connected with the Lepidoptera, though of "warning colours" he can only suggest one example of a moth in New Zealand, while he states that not a single instance of "mimicry" can yet be adduced in the Lepidoptera of the islands. In connection with the butterfly Anosia crippus—formerly generally known as Danais archippus, and which in quite recent times has spread over a large surface of the earth—it is interesting to note that it was observed in New Zealand as early as 1840. The cosmopolitan Pyrameis cardui, our "painted lady," is found in New Zealand, and so is Protoparce convolvuli, the Convolvulus Hawk-Moth, known so well at home and seen so generally abroad.
The plates are chromo-lithographed by West, Newman & Co. and in colour leave nothing to be desired. We have seen even more artistic work from this firm when they have had the insects themselves to portray; but in this case coloured drawings were sent home to be reproduced, which have been most faithfully copied. We trust that the author may fulfil his half-implied promise of publishing a similar work on the Micro-Lepidoptera of New Zealand.
- ↑ Europe, Asia, Africa, Asiatic islands down to Wallace's line, and North America down to the Isthmus of Tehuantepec.