202 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ALEXANDER GOODMAN MORE. 



the more remarkable in these days when truly '* of making many 

 books there is no end." 



To those who knew him, these memorials of Alexander Good- 

 man More will forcibly recall the genial friend whose intense 

 enthusiasm and lively wit were ever tempered by a gentleness 

 which attracted the affectionate regard of all who were brought 

 into personal intercourse with him. A naturalist of the highest 

 order, and with the keenest sense of what genuine and good work 

 in the several branches of science was, he never despised the 

 humblest worker, but was always ready to give cheering yet 

 wise encouragement and counsel. Many probably knew him 

 only from his letters ; and, as this volume will show, his letters 

 reveal the same character, abounding as they do in kindly satire 

 and criticism, as well as in full appreciation of true observation 

 and research. 



The writer has recently reperused some of the numerous letters 

 which in the halcyon days of long ago, 18G7-1887, he received 

 from Mr. More, and he was astonished to recognize how very 

 much he owed to the stimulus of these letters, full of most sound 

 advice and useful suggestion. Doubtless, to very many in the 

 wide circle of zoologists and botanists who knew him, Mr. More 

 has been a mentor, both enthusiastic and discreet, stirring students 

 to energetic effort, whilst ever inculcating caution and patience. 



To all lovers of nature this volume will be welcome, containing, 

 as it does, in its fifty-four chapters (pp. 1-398), admirable selections 

 from his correspondence and diaries ; and in the appendices (pp. 

 399-623) some valuable papers and notes, which are not easily 

 obtainable in their original issue. The whole book reveals a 

 diligent and painstaking worker in many lines of scientific 

 observation and research, who, excellent as he was in the field, 

 was no less so in the study, and whose education and training — 

 though seriously interfered with by a delicate constitution, and 

 by long and frequent periods of ill-health — had fitted him to make 

 the fullest use, for scientific purposes, of the opportunities which as 

 as a botanist and zoologist his life afforded him. 



It is refreshing in these days of rather over-devotion to 

 athleticism to read in this volume of the Kugby boy who, whilst 

 '*he took to public school-life with gusto" and "was a keen 

 athlete as well as a quick scholar," yet had the observant eye and 

 enquiring mind which even in his nursery had gained for More the 

 sobriquet of " Master Why-why." Whether he ever filled his 

 Kugby study with stinks, as did " Martin " in the days of " Tom 

 Brown," is uncertain, but "Natural History had now become his 

 recognized hobby"; and before he left school he had laid the 

 foundation of both his scientific knowledge and his scientific 

 library, and had contributed his first note to a scientific periodical, 

 The Zoologist, a note which, though it recorded a mistaken iden- 

 tification of a rare bird, yet shows an acquaintance with birds and 

 a close observation of the character of species unusual in one so 

 young. 



Beginning, as so many have done, with collecting insects and 



