The herald., 1897-06-13

| logical stations, and the preserva ton and
breeding of food fishes and oyster beds.
These two are exclusively a product Of
! the reign, and their Importance from
both biological and an economical
poiEt of view, carscarcely be overrated.
Frank Buckland in the first place, and
Huxley in the second have, In this de-
partment, well shown how men of the
highest scientific attairments can COM
! bine the pursuit of their own particular
studies with others yielding untold ad-
vantage to our fisheries.
| An equally close connections exists be-
tween deep-sea dredging and the study
of the growth Of coral islands and coral
reefs; subject entering upon. the do
main of both zoology ard geology This,
too, is a subject whose development has
taken place during the Victorian era,
Darwin's well known volume having ap-
peared in 1851, while Dana's "Corals and
Coral IslaEds" was published in 1875.
That the last word has not been said in
regard to the growth of coral islands is
proved by the recent partially unsuc-
,cessful boring expedition to the Barrier
Reef of Australia, under the superintend-
ence of Prof Solas. To the older geol-
ogists it would, doubtless, come as a Sc
we're shock to learn that our massive
Palaeozoic and Mesozoic limestones are,
| to great extent, merely ancient coral
reefs, yet this Is only one of the minor
recent discoveries connected with the
biology of the reign.
| Although Cuvier had, long previously
described the fossil mammals of the
gypsum quarries of Montmartre, while
considerable amount of work had al
ready been dore on the remains of those
from the French and German Tertiaries,
most other extinct Tertiary land faunas
| have been made known since 1897. And
| what an important part the discovery
ard description of these fauras and flo
| ras have played in regard to our ideas of
| the evolution of human beings, and also
| in respect to geographical distribution,
needs no telling here Falcorer and
Cautley's Fauna Antigua Sivalensis,"
| in which are depicted the extinct man.
malian remains from the Siwalill hills of
Northern India, seems to most of us a
work Of very ancient time; neverthe-
less, the first part did not appear until
1S45, while the last was published in
1S49. Gaudry's descriptions of the fossil
animals Of Attica only dates from 1862,
while the discoveries of the extinct NAM
malian faunas of Hungary, Persia,
China and Samos are still more modern
events. Within the last twenty years
the working of the phosphorites of Cen
tral France for economical purposes, has
revealed. the existence of numerous
Oligocene land fauna with which we
were previously only very imperfectly
acquainted.
More important than all are the pale
ontological discoveries which have
taken place late in the reign in the Meso-
zoic and Tertiary deposits of the United
States. These have erevolutionized many
pre-conceived ideas, ard have shown
that for the future the most important t
advances in the structure and history of
the higher vertebrates of past epochs
must come from the other side OF the
Allan tic. Not only have entirely new
groups of mammals, such as the horned
Dinoceras and Tltanatherium, been dis
covered there, but the remains of dino
saurian reptiles are met with in state
of perfection to which there is no COM
parisonin other parts of the globe. These
complete skeletons have not only fully
borne out the specula tions of Huxley and
Hulke as to the close structural resem-
blance between thees reptiles and birds,
but have also shown how nearly the re-
storations attempted by the English
aratomists approached the reality
Equally important have been the paleon-
tological discoveries in South America;
discoveries which indicate, without
doubt, a former Tertiary land connection
between that continent and distant Aus
tralia.
To even allude to some of the paleonto-
logical discoveries among the lower
1f
in the space at our disposal
Systematic zoology and botany have
passed through several stages during the
period under review. AS already said,
at the commencement of the reign the
former was laboring under the thrall Of
the circular hallucina ton, from which,
however, it at length cast itself free.
Since that time steady progress has on
the whole, been made in most branches,
as any one may satisfy himself who con-
trasts the Linnean system (Which was
chiefly in vogue in 1856 with that to be
found in any better class of modern text
books And here it may be mentioned
how vastly superior are these to their
predecessors of half a century ago.
Whether the progress has been equally
satisfactory on the species question may
well be doubted. Even early in the
reign gibes and taunts were freely lev
eled at the species monger," and it was
thought by many that the publication of
the Origin of Species" would be the
death-knell of abstraction, from which
it took its name.
For time, indeed, there was a lull,
and naturalists seemed inclined to take
broader and more philosophic estmata
of the amount of differences which ough.
to be regarded as of specific Importance.
But OF late years, and especially in
America, species-making has once more
taken a new lease of life, and every little
more or less constant difference Is now
regarded as Of specific or "sub-specific"
value. Indeed, we have even heard it
whispered that Species" of snail has
been restricted to the individuals in
habiting a particular tree trunk AS
in stamps, refinement in making dis
tinctions is almost an inseparable Sc
quence of ardent coliecting; but it is
permissible to doubt whether the haS-
splitting in this respect characteristic of
the present decade will eventually ba
included in the biological progress OF
the Victorian era.
r. LYDEKKER,
B. A. Cantab., f. r. S.