562 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



of natural history is extensive. We refer 

 not so much to the scientific knowledge of 

 the animal kingdom, its relationships and 

 classifications, as to the knowledge of the 

 ways, habits, instincts, and curious perform- 

 ances of the higher grades of the animate 

 tribes. And this knowledge is by no means 

 of the second-hand order so characteristic 

 of popular books on natural history. Dr. 

 Oswald has been an indefatigable observer 

 of animal habits, of widely extended oppor- 

 tunity in various countries, and with a pas- 

 sion for what we may call companionship 

 with inferior creatures. There is more of 

 novelty, freshness, and out-of-the-way in- 

 cident connected with the author's experi- 

 ence in this volume than in any other we 

 have lately seen. The admirable woodcuts, 

 no doubt, give effect to many of the curious 

 situations, but the writer's text is pictorial, 

 and vividly images what the limner can not 

 represent. We have undertaken to make 

 some selections, but choice is difficult where 

 you can find nothing better than all the rest. 

 The chapters on " Our Four-handed Eela- 

 tives," " Sacred Baboons," " Animal Rene- 

 gades," " Pets," " Secretiveness," " Traps," 

 and "Four-footed I'rize-fighters," are es- 

 pecially rich, but the others are hardly less 

 interesting. The book is to be commended 

 not only for its instructiveness as a higher 

 study of natural history, but for its human- 

 izing spirit, its sympathetic insight into ani- 

 mal characteristics, and its vivid and pleas- 

 ing style. 



There is a very considerable unity in 

 Dr. Oswald's various writings. They are 

 animated by a common feeling, and per- 

 vaded by the same fundamental ideas. Dr. 

 Oswald is a passionate lover of nature. In 

 his interesting book upon Mexico, the 

 brightness and fervor of his pictures of 

 natural scenery betray the poetical tend- 

 encies of his mind, which rejoices in com- 

 munion with all that is beautiful, pictur- 

 esque, wild, and sublime in mountains, pla- 

 teaus, and valleys that have not yet been 

 desecrated and desolated by the hand of 

 man. He holds that "the children of Nat- 

 ure have not lost their earthly paradise " ; 

 it is only those that have turned away from 

 her that have fallen. In his book on 

 " Physical Education," there is an earnest 

 pleading for a return to Nature on the part 



of those who have wandered away into mis- 

 leading courses under the guidance of false 

 ideas. There is something of sadness in 

 the impatient denunciation and stinging 

 invective of Dr. Oswald's writing, when he 

 speaks of the anti-natural apostasy which 

 has entailed so many evils on mankind. 

 Even in the preface to the present volume, 

 he returns to this subject as giving a clew 

 to the spirit in which it has been written, 

 and the presentation is so characteristic that 

 our readers will thank us for giving the 

 extract entire : 



The tendencies of our realistic civilization 

 make it evident that the study of natural science 

 is destined to supersede the mystic scholasti- 

 cism of the middle ages, and I believe that the 

 standards of entertaining literature will undergo 

 a corresponding change. The Spirit of Natural- 

 ism has awakened from its long slumber. 



A year after the birth of the Emperor Tibe- 

 rius, says Plutarch, a Grecian trading-vessel 

 sailed along the coast of MtoYia. in the Gulf of 

 Patras, and when the sun went down the crew 

 assembled at the helm to while away the night 

 with songs and stories. The night was calm, 

 and some of the sailors had already fallen asleep, 

 when they heard from the coast a loud voice 

 calling the name of their steersman, Thamus. 

 They were all struck dumb with amazement, 

 but, at the third call, Thamus manned himself, 

 and answered with a loud mariner's shout. 



"O Thamus," the voice called again, ' when 

 you reach the heights of Palodes announce that 

 the great Pan is dead 1 " 



Four hours later, when the moonlit hills of 

 Palodes hove in sight, Thamus complied with 

 the strange request, and, a minute after, the 

 coast resounded with indescribable shrieks and 

 lamentations that continued for a long time, tiil 

 they finally died away in the heights of the 

 Acarnanian Mountains. 



The tradition bears the mark of that sug- 

 gestiveness which distinguishes a philosophical 

 allegory from a priest legend. Pan was the 

 God of Nature. Can Plutarch have divined the 

 significance of the impending change? What- 

 ever is natural is wrong, was the keystone dogma 

 of the mediaeval school-men. The naturalism of 

 antiquity was crushed by supernatural and anti- 

 natural dogmas. The worship of joy yielded to 

 a worship of sorrow, the study of living nature 

 to the study of dead languages and barren soph- 

 isms. Literature became a farrago of ghost- 

 stories, monks' legends, witchcraft and mira- 

 cle traditions, and astrological vagaries. The 

 poison of anti-naturalism tainted every science 

 and every art, and perverted the very instincts 

 of the human mind. Painters vied in the rep- 

 resentation of revolting tortures. The exiles of 

 Mount Parnassus assembled on Mount Golgotha. 

 The moralists that had suppressed the Olympic 

 festivals compensated the public with autos-da- 



