Academy,  2 (1870–71), 336–37.

[Review of Notes of a Naturalist in the Nile Valley and Malta, by Andrew L Adams]

Alfred R Wallace

Genre:

Review

Publications reviewed:

Adams 1870

Subjects:

Naturalists, Publishing, Monographs, Archaeology, Reading, Natural History, Geology, Palaeontology, Wonder, Zoology, Extinction

People mentioned:

George Busk , Hugh Falconer


    Expresses disappointment that the 'valuable materials' of 'so enthusiastic a naturalist' as Andrew L Adams are 'presented to us in a form so much like that in which they must have existed in his original note-books', and suggests that the resulting volume 'will not prove very attractive to the general reader' (336–37). Commends the 'full account of the caverns and superficial deposits which yielded to Captain Spratt and the author those wonderful relics of a by-gone age—the pigmy elephants, the hippopotamus, the great extinct swan and fresh-water turtle, and the great dormouse'. This 'assemblage of animals points unmistakably to the connection of what is now Malta with Africa', and the remains of 'undoubtedly adult' elephants that 'would have stood about 7 feet high' offer 'a very striking exception to the rule of extinct being larger than existing species'. (337)



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