PREFACE.
The completion of another volume of 'The Zoologist' shows no diminution in the ranks of students of our British Fauna. The numbers of our contributors are practically an exact equivalent of those who produced the previous volume. Some we shall not hear from again, and we cannot help recurring to the loss of our old and valued contributor—John Cordeaux.
The Mammalia have not been neglected, and many original facts and observations have been published during the present year. Mr. Oldham's description of "The Mode in which Bats secure their Prey" is of permanent value. We have been enabled to give a good figure of the "Sea-Elephant" (Macrorhinus elephantinus), while the description of the Trek-bokke (Gazella euchore) refers to an animal which, owing to the destructiveness of man, will never be seen in its vast herds again.
Ornithology is the strength of the volume. It is unnecessary to detail any particulars among the many observations which have made 'The Zoologist' for 1899, as in all previous volumes, a special storehouse for facts in avian bionomics. We cannot, however, ignore Mr. Edmund Selous' "Observational Diary of the Habits of Nightjars." This is a unique publication, which seems to alone recall Prof. Mills' method in his "Psychic Development of Young Animals," published originally in the 'Transactions' of the Royal Society of Canada. The many necessary discussions which have appeared in our "Notes and Queries" maybe instanced by that on the "Nesting Habits of the Moor-hen."
In Reptilia, Mr. G.T. Rope has given us the results of his observations on the Common Toad (Bufo vulgaris), and Mr. Monk has written an excellent account of the spawning of
