REVIEW. 



Educatiox of Birds by their Parents. — Nothing is more striking than the efforts of 

 the maternal birds to tempt their young to make the first experiment of trusting them- 

 selves to their wings. The nightingale flutters around her nest holding an insect in her 

 bill at a little distance to draw her young to the edge of the nest and to incite them 

 through their appetite to make the first effort with their wings. The Iceland driver of- 

 fers a still more striking spectacle of maternal solicitude. The bird builds its nest on 

 the steepest summits of the mountains near the shores of the sea. As soon as her young 

 are fledged, she ceases to bring them food. But she continues to visit them, to flutter 

 about the nest, to show them the power of her wings, and to invite them to follow her. 

 The younger bird, oppressed by hunger, approaches the edge of the precipice, hesitates, 

 and finally falls into the air. Its wings are too small to sustain it, and it would dash 

 upon the rocks below. The mother summons the aid of the male. They spread their 

 wings in concert a little beneath their young, to allow free play to their wings. Thus 

 they gently lot the bird down to the shore, crowds of their kind assemble round the young 

 bird, and raise cries of congratulation at the view of this new companion, that maternal 

 love has emboldened to the first attempt at flight. 



33,zhkbi. 



The World a Workshop ; or the Physical Relationship of man to the earth. By Thomas 



Ewhank, 12 mo. New Yo7'k, 1855. 



Mr. Ewbank is a thoughtful and suggestive writer; his work on "Hydraulics and 

 Mechanics" met with less public appreciation than it deserved, perhaps because people 

 generally were not aware that it was very amusing, having popularised his sub- 

 jects so as to interest the least scientific. It is a book to be read and passed down to ones 

 descendant-i, as lull of facts no less than entertainment. 



The present work is much smaller, and assumes more the form of essays upon man and 

 his connection with matter, being designed to prove that our relations to earth have 

 clearly adapted us to labor in the great workshop, designed and literally fitted up for the 

 cultivation and application of chemical and mechanical science as the basis of human 

 development. All, he contends, are workers in and modifiers of natter. To man, in 

 common with the rest, a task is given which, if fully understood, would place in a new 

 and a better light this much abused orb of ours. It is the opinion of many that decay 

 has seized its vitals, that its resources are approaching exhaustion, and the arts their 

 climax ; but our author strenuously and sensibly contends that in reality it is a spring of 

 physical truths which man can never run dry. Chemistry and Physics, as the exponents 

 of inorganic bodies, and Botany and Zoology of the organic, will pour, and continue to 

 pour forth new elements, combinations, forms, forces, and motions. We have had 

 pleasing illustrations cf this in our own day, which, so far from inducing fear of the font 

 failing, are prophetic of its fulness. 

 What then, he asks, was it that so conspicuously was to mark man's connection with the 

 earth, and more than anything else proclaim him lord or lessee of it? It was the char- 

 acter he was to assume as a Manipulator of matter. The earth was to be a manufactory 



