The Naturalisfs Poetical Companion. 8^,. 



A Fellow of the Linncean Society : The Naturalist's Poetical 

 Companion, with Notes. Foolscap 8vo, 360 pages. Hamil- 

 ton & Co., London; Knight, Leeds; 1833. 

 The date of publication of this book marks an epoch in 

 the progress of natural history in Britain. 



One of Euclid's postulates is, " a circle may be described 

 from any centre, at any distance from that centre:" so, in 

 nature, there is not an ol3Ject which may not become the centre 

 of a thousand associating circumstances. The systematist 

 encircles every object with a series of considerations on its 

 affinities and distinctive characters ; the economist, with his 

 calculations on the answers it will bear to his grand testing 

 question of cui bono P the sentimentalist, with his halo of 

 "pleasing thoughts and kindly emotions;" others with other 

 considerations, but none with evil ones ; for, as Sir James 

 Edward Smith has said, " in nature, all is elegance and de- 

 light ; and none but the most foolish or depraved can derive 

 any thing from it but what is beautiful, or associate with its 

 lovely objects any but the most amiable or most hallowed 

 images." Thus far good and true ; and it only remains that 

 each party perceive the propriety and the duty of depre- 

 cating, in spirit and in practice, that exclusive feeling, which, 

 if not deprecated, would lead him to deem the circle de- 

 scribed by the student of a taste distinct from himself, less 

 noble in diameter than the circle which he himself describes. 

 This premised, it is time to state that the volume before us is 

 one filled to overflowing with a collection of the " pleasing 

 thoughts and kindlv emotions" which sentimental naturalists 

 have, from time to time, encircled around, and associated with, 

 certain and many of the innumerable objects of nature. 



Sentimental naturalists, at least those of them who have de- 

 scribed the feelings and ideas which natural objects have excited 

 within them, have been fewer; have awakened into action 

 later; and, consequently, have fewer followers, admirers, and 

 pupils, than other students in nature, who have been longer 

 in the field, and have, by their more multiplied researches and 

 discoveries, rendered themselves more rich and more capable 

 of enriching others of tastes congenial to their own. The 

 present little volume shows something, a good deal — for, per- 

 haps, two more such volumes would hold all — of what has been 

 done in sentimental natural history; and the reason why we 

 think that it marks an epoch in the progress of natural history 

 in Britain is, that it is significant to see the teachers in the 

 sentimentality of natural history so numerous as this little 

 volume shows them to be, and the day arrived when the (other 

 or) precursory branches of natural history have been so 



