Laboratory, Wood's Holl, Mass., U.S.A. Some most valuable and interesting observations on the life-histories of Leeches (Clepsine) are detailed, though the publication is mostly of a philosophical character. Special emphasis is devoted to the view "that instincts are evolved, not improvised, and that their genealogy may be as complex and far-reaching as the history of their organic bases."
We have received from our contributor, Prof. J.H. Salter, a "List of the Birds of Aberystwyth and Neighbourhood," published by the University College of Wales Scientific Society. We need scarcely observe that such lists are highly valued by ornithologists, especially when compiled by competent authority, as is done in the present instance.
Mr. L. Upcott Gill has again produced his annual 'Naturalists' Directory.' The publication for 1900 is far in advance of its predecessors. We no longer notice the absence of so many well-known names, though we think a reference to our pages could increase the number of British zoologists. The List of Societies, Field Clubs, and Museums is a welcome feature of this inexpensive and very useful handbook.
The death is announced, in his eighty-sixth year, of Canon Atkinson, the well-known author of 'Forty Years in a Moorland Parish,' a delightful volume which was published some nine years ago. He had held the living of Danby-in-Cleveland for nearly three years over the half-century, and during his incumbency he calculated that he had walked 70,000 miles whilst engaged in clerical work. He was a naturalist, an antiquarian, and a sportsman.
We also regret to record the death of Dr. St. George Mivart, which occurred on April 1st, at the age of seventy-three. The deceased was a zoologist who was best known as a polemical writer, his 'Genesis of Species,' though anti-Darwinian, being recognized by Huxley as worthy of combat, and who described Mivart as "less of a Darwinian than Mr. Wallace, for he has less faith in the power of natural selection. But he is more of an evolutionist than Mr. Wallace, because Mr. Wallace thinks it necessary to call in an intelligent agent—a sort of supernatural Sir John Sebright—to produce even the animal frame of man; while Mr. Mivart requires no Divine assistance till he comes to man's soul." Dr. Mivart, as before mentioned, was an accomplished zoologist. To the "man in the street" he will be remembered by his recently published differences with the Roman Church, with which he had been long in communion.
