106 MONTHLY REVIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. 



forming bargains of any sort. Almost every one you meet will have the best 

 horse, the best cattle, sheep, &c., the island produces, for sale ; but let the 

 second best be good enough for you ; or rather remember, that there is no- 

 thing so good that something else may not be found which will equally 

 answer the purpose ; or, again, that it is better sometimes to be without a 

 thing a week than to have it one day too soon." 



THE MISCELLANY OF NATURAL HISTORY. VOL. I. PARROTS. 

 BY SIR THOS. DICK LANDER, BART., AND CAPT. THOS. BROWN. 

 FRAZER AND Co., EDINBURGH ; SMITH, ELDER, AND Co., LON- 

 DON, 1833 



THIS is a pretty volume, so very pretty to look at, that it seems 

 almost a sin to say any thing against it. And yet praise is out of 

 the question. For instead of being a volume by Sir T. D. Lander 

 and Captain Brown, it is really a volume by Wilson and Auderbon. 

 The freest use has been made of the works of those eminent orni- 

 thologists, but without a word of apology : the liberty is neither an- 

 nounced on the title page, nor explained in the preface ; but page 

 after page you meet the inverted commas, which are the usual marks 

 of an extract, and, frequently as these occur, we scarcely doubt 

 but that much more is borrowed from the same source, to which 

 even these poor signs of another author's property, are not affixed. 

 If in the rage for? cheap publications, and the avidity to gain money 

 by pampering the existing appetite for popular knowledge a know- 

 ledge which may not inaptly be described, both on the part of 

 readers and writers, as being superficial in proportion to its popu- 

 larity authors of rank, who ought to be high-minded men, men of 

 character, exhibit examples of wholesale piracy such as this, what 

 may not be expected from the trading bookseller, and the pinched 

 and half-fed scholars, who do the drudgery of authorship|? With 

 such a book as, " Vol. I. PARROTS ; OF THE MISCELLANY OF 

 NATURAL HISTORY," before us, we are bound, for the cause of lite- 

 rature and literary men, a cause dear to us and more valuable to the 

 nation than we shall stop to describe for that cause we are bound 

 to ask Sir Thomas Dick Lander, whether it is fair or honourable 

 thus to get up small, cheap, and attractive volumes, which never 

 would have been even thought of, had not the tempting opportunity 

 existed to condense one-fourth and copy three-fourths, gratis, of their 

 contents from large and costly works, which it almost required a life 

 of labour and travel a very martyrdom to science to produce, as 

 well as an outlay of capital which, even in these days of hoarded 

 wealth, cannot be regarded as inconsiderable? This question v;e do 

 address to Sir T. D. Lander, because on him we trust it will have 

 some effect we say nothing to Captain Brown, because he has been 

 so long accustomed to this sort of literary larceny, that we suppose 

 old habits in him have become second nature. 



THE CONCHOLOGIST'S COMPANION. BY MARY ROBERTS. 18mo. 

 WHITTAKER, AND Co., 1833. 



THIS is a well-meant and, as far as science is concerned, a harm- 

 less volume, with which we should have been better pleased had its 



