PREFACE.
With the December issue 'The Zoologist' has reached the end of the nineteenth century, and has completed its fifty-eighth volume. It is interesting to glance at the status of Zoology when this Journal was founded by Edward Newman in 1843, and its progress since.
The Zoological Society had been founded in 1826, and was thus in only the seventeenth year of its existence; the Entomological Society was but ten years old. The Ray Society was not started till the following year (1844), and is therefore one year younger than 'The Zoologist.' In the year that 'The Zoologist' first appeared there was published the concluding volume on the Zoology of the Voyage of H.M.S. 'Beagle,' the vessel in which Darwin made his celebrated voyage. Lyell was steadily preparing his 'Travels in North America,' which was published in the early part of 1845. May, 1843, is the published date of the eighteenth and last part of Agassiz' monumental work, 'Recherches sur les Poissons fossiles.' In the same year the Rev. W. Kirby was still alive, and a sixth edition (vols. i. and ii.) of his immortal 'Introduction,' with the addition of one hundred MS. pages of new matter, was published. Frank Buckland was at Winchester College with heart set on becoming a surgeon. Huxley was a student winning prizes. Eight months of this year were occupied by Audubon in his Missouri River journey in the interest of the 'Quadrupeds of North America.' The British Museum was under the influence of Panizzi, who this year inaugurated his extensive reforms in the Printed Library. In the epochs of this institution we can pass, according to our purview, from the acquisition of the Mantell Fossils in 1839 to that of the Croizet Fossil-Mammals in 1848. Bloomsbury was then the home of literature. In 1843 Catesby also completed his 'Natural History of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama Islands,' a pioneer work, now seldom consulted amidst the ever increasing literature of North American biology. The voyages of the 'Erebus' and 'Terror,' rich in zoological results, terminated this year; John Gould was publishing his magnificent ornithological publications, and in 1843 Lovell Reeve commenced to issue his 'Conchologia Iconica.' In this year was also finished the Second Series of Jardine
