The Zoologist/4th series, vol 2 (1898)/Issue 684/Notices of New Books
NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS.
Sir William Flower in this volume has collected and published most of the principal essays and addresses which he has from time to time written or delivered on Zoological—including Anthropological—subjects, and which from their non-technical character appeal not only to naturalists but also to the usual cultured reader. There is always a danger that the special element of a man's great success may prove a cloud which serves to obscure his other qualities. We are so apt to think and read of the author as the greatest of contemporary Museum Directors, that we are liable to overlook the fact that his influence on Zoology has been exercised over a wider field, and that his services to Anthropology in England have been of a signal character.
The first seven chapters or essays are altogether devoted to "Museums," a subject which to the general public would probably be thought threadbare, by the rank and file of ordinary curators has been canonised and fossilised, and which is now in its renaissance both in Europe and America, with potentialities for instruction which democracies have hardly yet suspected, and which in time they will very heartily support. The Museum of the future must serve two purposes; not only must it prove the temple for scientific study and research, by vast accumulation of specimens, and not by a limitation to examples as in a Noachian collection; but it must be made to attract and instruct our general humanity in the secrets and charms of the animal life to which it belongs, of that which has preceded its era, and of that which has vanished and is still vanishing from its contact. The time is past when the wretched holiday seeker, uninstructed in zoology, unassisted by state-paid instructors or guides, wanders his weary way past miles of glass cases crammed with stuffed skins, and eventually emerges tired and unenlightened to ardently seek refreshment of another nature. We unhesitatingly say that this official obscurantism is no longer possible, and that it is owing to chiefs like Sir William Flower that it is dying now and will be incapable of resuscitation in the future. A zoological museum is capable of a vast aesthetic leavening of the masses; a love of nature is universal and precedes art. The degradation of museums to the present zoological ignorance of the masses is not desired, but a levelling up of the latter is the thing needful, when natural history may be seen to be a thing of national importance, and worthy of real national support. At present, as Sir William observes, "the largest museum yet erected, with all its internal fittings, has not cost so much as a single fullyequipped line-of-battle ship, which in a few years may be either at the bottom of the sea, or so obsolete in construction as to be worth no more than the materials of which it is made."
Pregnant with meaning, not only from its matter, but also by its place of delivery, is the paper read before the Church Congress in 1883, on "the sequence of events which have taken place in the universe, to which the term 'evolution' is now commonly applied." Great as was the import of this communication to such an audience fifteen years ago, it is more than probable that a similar Congress at the present day would appreciate the subject as less disturbing and more familiar. Than Sir William Flower no better enunciator could have been found of the "doctrine of continuity" to a body of men whose studies lay outside a philosophical conception which yet made its presence felt in all regions of thought. It required in such an assembly the cautious handling of an expert, so that the teaching of the naturalist should neither appear as an inerrant dogma, nor, as is sometimes the case, a stream of biological assumptions or suggestions. In fact, among some zoologists, and other speculative writers of the day, an opinion by the author of this book may well be considered, "that natural selection, or survival of the fittest, has, among other agencies, played a most important part in the production of the present condition of the organic world, and that it is a universally acting and beneficent force continually tending towards the perfection of the individual, of the race, and of the whole living world." We have ventured to italicise a few words.
Space will only allow us to draw further attention to two really zoological treatises (XIV. and XV.)—on Whales past and present—which it should be noted are to be found in this volume; to some well-known anthropological addresses; and to biographical sketches of Rolleston, Owen, Huxley, and Darwin.
The appearance of this work is but little subsequent to the Text-Book of Parker and Haswell, recently noticed in these pages (ante, p. 132). Its aim is distinctly stated—"to place before English students of Zoology a treatise in which the subject was dealt with on the lines followed with so much advantage by Claus and his predecessors in their works on Zoology." This volume—the first—deals with the whole of the animal kingdom except the Arthropoda, the Echinodermata, and the Chordata, which will form the subject of the second volume. A third may probably be issued devoted generally to the facts and principles of Zoology.
Books of this character can be reviewed in two ways: either criticised by a specialist for some weakness or novelty in his own particular study to which he may have devoted his life; or brought to the notice of the general zoologist or naturalist, as a comprehensive whole, where the latest knowledge may be sought by the specialist on the general subject, and where the general student may expect to find special information on the concrete subject. The labour and anxiety to produce a modern text-book is now necessarily enormous, and a feeling of great responsibility arises in writing a notice of a work which, if it fulfils its purpose, must prove a technical encyclopædia to zoologists who study only the histories of the mature life of animals, and who seek instruction in deeper biological principles. Our pages, we need hardly remind the reader, are devoted to the former, but we all frequently need an authoritative guide to the latter. It is thus a mistake to altogether appreciate these works as students' textbooks; they cover a wider area, and are, in the true sense, works of reference.
Prof. Sedgwick is an advocate of a preliminary knowledge of Zoology being acquired by the study of types, a method largely introduced into this country by Huxley, as a basis from which extended studies can be made, and the present work is stated as designed to assist those further studies. The study of types is now an excellent and almost universal method, though Prof. Ray Lankester has recently proposed that a second course might be pursued in the study of "exceptional, puzzling, and debateable animals," by which significance of structure could be considered as the means of discussing affinities.
The classification is generally in agreement with that of the recent work of Parker and Has well, but with some differences. Thus those authors appended the Nemerteans to the Phylum Platyhelminthes, whilst Prof. Sedgwick treats them as a distinct Phylum—Nemertea. He also considers the Polyzoa and Brachiopoda as constituting distinct Phylla, but which Parker and Haswell treated as classes of Molluscoida. These authors also placed the Mollusca after the Arthropoda, whilst in the work under present notice they follow the Rotifera. The position of the Echinodermata is also differently considered. We simply draw attention to the differences in method of these two notable publications because they have both appeared almost synchronously, and also because modern classifications are taken as representative of current views on derivation.
Although this text-book is necessarily of a technical description, there are still scattered some of those facts or incidents in life narratives so appreciated by the contributors and readers of this Magazine. As an instance, we may quote from the general remarks on the Mollusca. About 25,000 species are known, and are found in the sea to a depth of nearly 3000 fathoms. "Their duration of life, where known, varies from one to thirty years; the Pulmonates generally live two years, but the garden snail has been known to live five years. The oyster is adult at about five years, and lives to ten years. The Anodonta do not arrive at sexual maturity till five years, and live for twenty or thirty years."
We shall await with interest the completion of the work.
Birds in London must be the ornithological subjects of the many who can seldom escape from the metropolis, or who, with Dr. Johnson, like to feel the high tide of life at Charing Cross. Though the scene of this book is neither laid in the City nor a restricted London, but embraces much suburban territory dear to villadom, including even Richmond Park, the general area is one over which the builder has now much sway, and whose wild nature, where not curtailed, is at least much bricked in. Consequently we are prepared for. the tale which is told. "For many years there have been constant changes going on in the bird population, many species decreasing, a very few remaining stationary, and a few new colonists appearing; but, generally speaking, the losses greatly exceed the gains." The Magpie and Jay still exist at a distance of six and a half to seven miles from Charing Cross, and the Woodpigeons have come to town and apparently come to stay. Both the Moorhen and Dabchick have settled down in St. James's Park; the Jackdaw and Owl are still resident in Kensington Gardens; the Sparrow is always with us, to which in numbers the Starling ranks next, though "the Starlings' thousands are but a small tribe compared to the Sparrows' numerous nation." We have all seen Fieldfares in the suburbs, but in 1896 a few alighted in a tree at the Tower of London. Mr. Hudson remarks the disappearance of the Greenfinch from several localities, and we think that most observers will have noticed the scarcity of this bird round London. Forty years ago it was a very abundant bird round Nunhead, when schoolboy inspection of the store-cages of the professional catcher seldom failed to discover it as the principal captive, and many a "bright" bird have we purchased for a penny. Now the erstwhile market gardens have disappeared, thanks to the industry of the builder and the increase of the population, but Mr. Hudson reports the bird as still sheltered in Nunhead Cemetery.
The great enemy of the London birds is the Cat. "Millions of Sparrows are yearly destroyed by Cats in London," and the author thinks "that not more than two young birds survive out of every dozen of all the Sparrows that breed in houses." The number of these feline marauders in London is estimated at not less than half a million, while ownerless Cats, which are thus thrown more on their own resources, are considered to reach in the same area the prodigious quantity of from eighty to a hundred thousand. These furies hunt the parks by night. "The noisy clang of the closing park gates is a sound well known to the Cats in the neighbourhood; no sooner is it heard than they begin to issue from areas and other places where they have been waiting, and in some spots as many as half a dozen to a dozen may be counted in as many minutes crossing the road and entering the park at one spot." No wonder that lovers of birds—either wild or in captivity—are "death on Cats."
This book contains no lists of birds, but is devoted to general facts, many of which are of an anecdotal character. Some good stories are told, and perhaps one of the most piquant is that of Mr. Cunninghame Graham writing to an eminent ornithologist for advice as to obtaining Books for his trees, and receiving a lengthy reply "pointing out the fallacies of Socialism as a political creed, but saying nothing about Rooks." Mr. Hudson writes in a delightfully unconventional manner, a by no means too frequent occurrence in these days; he is also not afraid of "calling names." Thus a local birdstuffer "who killed the last surviving Magpies at Hampstead" is not inappropriately styled a "miscreant," and the keeper who destroyed the last Ravens' nest in Hyde Park justly earns the title of "injurious wretch." The author is a true lover of birds, as his own words best testify.
"Without the 'wandering Hern,' or Buzzard, or other large soaring species, the sky does not impress me with its height and vastness; and without the sea-fowl the most tremendous seafronting cliff is a wall which may be any height; and the noblest cathedral without any Jackdaws soaring and gambolling about its towers is apt to seem little more than a great barn, or a Dissenting chapel on a gigantic scale."