330 CRITICAL NOTICES OP NEW PUBLICATIONS. 



With regard to the Address of Dr. Hastings, we consider it to 

 have been exceedingly well adapted to the occasion on which it was 

 delivered ; and it is, perhaps, almost superfluous to say that, coming 

 from a man so well known and esteemed by his " medical friends," 

 its style is elegant and its sentiments unexceptionable. It seems 

 especially to call for the active co-operation of his brethren in the 

 healing art, and cursorily traces the progress of Natural History, or 

 rather of the writers on Zoology, Botany, &c , from Solomon and 

 Aristotle down to Cuvier and Buckland. All receive in turn their 

 due modicum of praise for their respective labours, and this Address 

 may be considered to be a good recapitulation of what has been done 

 by others in the wide field of scientific inquiry. In one respect, 

 however, we wish the learned physician had been more explicit, and 

 have stated distinctly what has been effected by the members of the 

 Society he then represented. It seems somewhat remarkable that, 

 on this point, he is entirely silent, and while glorying in " the 

 splendid edifice" which " promises to stand for ages," he makes no 

 mention of any researches which might be calculated to reflect lus- 

 tre upon the building in which he stood, but rather to rest satisfied 

 in the " memorial of those exertions by which so great a work has 

 been accomplished." But we must be permitted, however fastidi- 

 ous it may seem, to take a somewhat different view. We always 

 hoped the formation of Natural History societies would rouse the 

 energies of latent genius, and bring forth local talents that wanted 

 only a place to stand on to exhibit useful effort, and quiet, unosten- 

 tatious, but laborious and useful, research. We expected that such 

 institutions would materially add to the stock of our knowledge. 

 A splendid building is, in our view, but a secondary consideration, 

 if its grandeur extinguishes the effort and spirit that distinguished 

 its members when a united few, with incommodious premises and 

 insuflScient means. It is not always the holder of the patent rod 

 and morocco book of gorgeous flies that fills his fishing-basket ; the 

 humble urchin, intent upon his purpose, is often more successful 

 with his crooked pin. We wish, therefore, that while bricks and 

 mortar have the praise to which they are entitled, those re- 

 searches should not be forgotten which can alone do honour to 

 societies, when perhaps gorgeous buildings are converted to other 

 purposes than their founders intended them. As Dr. Hastings has 

 nowhere stated in this Address what has been undertaken or accom- 

 plished by any members of the Society, save and except the fascicu- 

 lus of the History of Worcestershire appended thereto, we now pro- 

 ceed to direct our attention to this production. 



Thai even a remote and isolated rural parish may be most de- 

 lightfully treated of by the natural historian, no one who has ever 

 glanced over one of the numerous editions of White's Selborne will 

 for a moment deny. But then it is not the topographer or the sta- 

 tist who can satisfactorily perform this task. Tables may be con- 

 structed and compiled from documents in a week, a parish may be 

 surveyed in a mouthy but the natural history of a tree, if its minute 



