OCEAN GARDENS. 105 



zoophytes, etc. (which certainly cannot be regarded as liquid food), is 

 spoken of. 



With a few exceptions, the names of none of the animals mentioned are 

 properly spelt. Thus, we have Geniaster for Goniaster, Dunicata for Tuni- 

 cata, Gastrophasna for Gastrochaena, Paguras for Pagurus, to say nothing 

 of Sepia vulgaris for Sepiola vulgaris, Egines punctiluceus for Egirus 

 punctilucens, with a host of others. " Stars of the class Luidia" are called 

 brittle stars, so that the student is led to suppose that this Echinoderm 

 belongs to the Ophiuridae. The Aplysia is described among the Nudi- 

 branchs and the Chiton is said to be a sort of sea woodlous,e. The figures 

 with which the work is illustrated are showy, but are executed, in general, 

 without much regard to accuracy. 



The author takes a high stand upon a mound of his own erection, and 

 frequently denounces therefrom the " superficial knowledge," " imperfect 

 observations," which have become so injurious to science, and deplores the 

 state of u Egyptian darkness" in which so many are involved. Shakspeare 

 is held up as a deplorable example of an intellectual giant who could not 

 see nature, and two mistakes in the expression, " eyeless venomed worm," 

 are pointed out. 



Now, though we can show that three mistakes are here made (one of 

 which, and that the most striking, has escaped Mr. Humphreys), yet we 

 still think that Shakspeare could see nature a great deal better than Mr. 

 Humphreys, and those who have read Mr. Patterson's delightful little book 

 on the " Insects mentioned in Shakspeare's plays" will, probably, think 

 the same. 



Mr. Humphreys concludes his work with a sublime apostrophe on the 

 possibility of a gigantic aquarium — " It only remained to the ancients to 

 have exhibited a Titanic Aquarium to render our triumph over their la- 

 bours in the field of popular natural history impossible. Had but a Eoman 

 Warrington or Gosse, &c, adopted the germ of such an idea, and an 

 Osier existed to furnish the glass, the Pompey, or Caesar, or Crassus would 

 not have been wanting to feast the eyes both of patrician and plebeian 

 Rome, with an aquarium measuring hundreds of feet in length, in which 

 the monsters of the deep would have been exhibited in deadly conflict, and 

 human divers, armed with net and trident, like the retiariae of their gladia- 

 torial combats, would have encountered beneath the waters the shark, the 

 whale, or the torpedo, to the shouts of crowded circuses, the centre of 

 which would have been a glass-walled aquarium. But a gigantic aquarium 

 is, fortunately, a feat that yet remains for modern science to achieve, and 



