4-9 



REVIEWS. 



Art. I. The British Naturalist ; or, Sketches of the more inter- 

 esting Productions of Britain and the surrounding Sea, in the 

 Scenes ivhich they inhabit ; and with relation to the General 

 Economy of Nature, and the Wisdom and Power of its Author, 

 Vols. I. and II. l2mo. London ; Whittaker, Treacher, and Co. ; 

 1830. 



We take shame to ourselves for having so long neglected 

 to notice this interesting little w^ork, the first volume of which 

 has been lying on our table, unheeded, we blush to say, for 

 more than a year and a half! We can assure the author we 

 intended no disrespect to him by this delay ; a delay, indeed, 

 which we the less regret, as it enables us to " kill two birds 

 with one stone ; " or, in other words, to introduce our readers 

 to the second volume also, which we have now received. Tar- 

 dily, however, as we have at last entered on the task, we must 

 content ourselves even now with taking but a slight and hasty 

 glimpse at the work before us. Our limits would absolutely 

 forbid us from following our author step by step in all his 

 rambles 



" O'er moss and moor, by mountain and by flood ; " 



and, besides, our wish is, to prevail on our readers to go to 

 the book itself, rather than allow them to put up with what 

 at best must necessarily be but an imperfect and garbled 

 account of its multifarious contents. Works on natural his- 

 tory, both of the scientific and the popular cast, calculated 

 respectively for the use of the learned few and of the unlearned 

 many, have abounded in the present day ; and the circum- 

 stance may be regarded as at once both a proof of the increas- 

 ing taste for the study of nature, and in great measure as the 

 promoting cause of such increase. Without drawing invi- 

 dious comparisons between the respective merits of these two 

 distinct classes of literary productions, or praising one at the 

 expense of the other, suffice it to say, once for all, that we 

 think each very good and very useful in its way. " I admit," 

 Vol. V. — No. 23. e 



