SPARROW-PUDDING NATURALISTS. 215 



number of that entertaining and truly valuable work, the Rev. 

 W. T. Bree has rendered himself very pleasantly obnoxious to cen- 

 sure ; so has a Master of Arts, named Dovaston, of Westfelton near 

 Shrewsbury ; with whom it will suit our convenience to deal first. 



Quoth this eminent Stagyrite, in an article concocted for the pur- 

 pose apparently of applauding himself, " I can discriminate almost 

 every kind of tree, as it is called upon, either solo or in score, to take 

 part in the grand choral harmonies of the tempest. Now it ROARS 

 deep and still (roaring deep and still is beyond our comprehension,) 

 among the oaks just behind this book room ; anon it BREATHES hoarse 

 and hollow (breathes hoarse and hollow !) upon the dark old Scotch 

 pines of the Cider Mill grove ; GROANS through the sycamore, and 

 lime avenue ' that weather-fends my cell ;' RATTLES the bony boughs 

 of the skeleton ash (there's for you, followers of Byron !) ; HOWLS 

 through the elms (quite in taste, for they are to be converted into 

 coffins,); HISSES, and each obviously different (each what?) in the 

 cedars, spruce and silver fir ; WHISTLES through the larch ; WHIS- 

 PERS in the Weymouth and the Aphornousli ; and suddenly WHISKS 

 a solitary cypress ; while the evergreens and dry-leaved hornbeams 

 keep up a constant accompaniment, each after his kind !" How 

 swollen, tumid, and absurd a paragraph is this ! Here is a gentleman 

 who professes to recognize each individual voice in a concert of trees; 

 and of what does that concert consist ? Why (we entreat the reader 

 to check us by the verbs in the paragraph quoted) of roaring, breath- 

 ing hoarse and hollow, groaning, rattling, howling, hissing, whistling, 

 and whispering ! What an exquisite musical treat ! What a Pistol of 

 a Naturalist ! 



Having thus settled the affairs of " John F. M. Dovaston, Esq. 

 A.M." let us turn our polite attention to those of " that amiable natu- 

 ralist," the Rev. W. T. Bree, M.A. (Query, what is the distinction 

 between these literal honours ? Is M.A. a cut above A.M.^ or vice 

 versa ?) The last-mentioned gentleman, " that amiable naturalist," in 

 the Number of the Magazine of Natural History already quoted, has 

 indulged the public with a few addenda as to the eccentric architec- 

 tural propensities of birds. ' He gives cuts and cases. Among the 



is full of interest, full of information. Loudon suffers his contributors to 

 4< prattle apace," as though they were sitting by his own fire-side ; he never 

 interrupts, he never corrects their little absurdities, but leaves the castigation 

 of the delinquent to the sense of the company. And most preciously, to say 

 the truth, are the culprits chastized by their fellow -labourers in the vineyard. 

 If a contributor happen to commit an error, or to hazard an absurd speculation in 

 one number, he ia certain to be held up to scorn and ridicule in the next. Na- 

 turalists soar above mere bantering ; they are, all of them, little and great, in 

 earnest, and deal home strokes to offenders. No fool, therefore, can flourish long 

 in Loudon's Magazine ; a shaft from the " Retrospective Criticism" is sure to 

 bring him down. If an assertion in one livraison escape obloquy or contradic- 

 tion in the next, it may be deemed tolerably valid. Were the work lunar, we 

 should not print the article to which this is a note ; for we should feel certain 

 that the delinquencies of the Sparrow Pudding Naturalists in the last number 

 would be fully castigated in the next ; but as the Magazine appears only every 

 second month, we do not scruple to admit an article, the sense of which would 

 doubtless appear, in some shape or other, in Loudon's next, published in 

 March. EDITOR. 



