REVIEWS. 121 



alba, though it may be larger ; nor is it so abundant an ornament of the tropical 

 waters as the latter is of ours." 



We have extracted this passage, as affording an instance of the absence 

 of exaggeration which pervades this volume. We regret that we cannot 

 extract any passages from the able summary of zoology of the district, 

 which presents some curious peculiarities of local distribution. The eth- 

 nological notes and vocabularies, which conclude the volume, are from the 

 pen of Dr. Latham, and give still greater value to a work, which will be 

 gladly read by all who are interested in the labours of a naturalist in the 

 tropics. 



My School and Schoolmasters. By Hugh Miller. Second edition. 8vo. 

 Pp. 537. Edinburgh : Johnstone and Hunter. Price 7s. 6d. 



In these pages we have the autobiography of an observant mind while 

 passing through a chequered life — " a sort of educational treatise in a 

 narrative form" — from the pen of one who owes much to his own exer- 

 tions, and who is now reaping the harvest of a life of self-discipline and 

 self-culture ; honoured by all who have the privilege of his friendship, or 

 can esteem his virtues. 



Mr. Miller is the descendant of a long line of sea-faring men — skilful 

 and adventurous sailors — some of whom had coasted along the Scottish 

 shores as early as the times of Sir Andrew Wood, and the " Bold Bartons," 

 and mayhap had helped to man that " verrie monstrous schippe, the 

 Great Michael," that " cumbered all Scotland to get her to the sea." His 

 father, " one of the best sailors that ever sailed the Moray Firth," was lost 

 at sea, in the year 1807, when our author was only five years old ; and 

 from this period his recollections date. Though commencing so early, his 

 impressions bear with them the stamp of sincerity, and are most interesting 

 when taken in connection with the influence his earliest years appear to 

 have exercised over his after life. When only five years old he was sent 

 to a dame's school, where it was not until his sixth year, when his mind 

 was called into exercise by a perusal of the story of Joseph, he made the 

 greatest of all discoveries, " that the art of reading is the art of finding 

 stories in books ;" and from that moment a new era dawned on our author, 

 and the embryo geologist collected a library in a box of birchen bark, about 

 nine inches square, which he found quite large enough to contain a great 

 many immortal works suited to his years, for 



" Those intolerable nuisances, the useful-knowledge books, had not yet arisen, 

 like tenebrious stars, on the educational horizon, to darken the world and shed 



VOL. I. K 



