322 Bibliographical Notices. 



rior, and each, isolated, and careless of the rest, clears his little spot in 

 the wilderness ; others remain at the port, gather from all sides the 

 produce of their wandering brethren, and return to them the wares 

 of other countries, or the value, in the current coin, of their own crude 

 materials, which, isolated, had become but so much useless lumber. 

 So it is in natural science : there are backwoodsmen in natural 

 history, — men who furnish the raw material of science, as well as 

 merchants, who convert that raw material into handy, available 

 knowledge. And in the case of science as in that of ordinary Ufe, it 

 is of importance that the capitalists and the productive classes should 

 understand that their interests are common, and that each derives his 

 importance from the other. 



We must have out-of-door naturalists before we have in-door natu- 

 ralists, and any supercilious depreciation of one another cannot but 

 remind a dispassionate observer of the old story of the belly and the 

 members. 



The author of the present work has furnished us with a book of 

 the backwoodsman class. Some books are said to " smell of the 

 lamp," — this " babbles o' green fields." It is redolent of new hay and 

 the hedge violet. Far away from the study of the anatomist, from the 

 museum of the zoologist, it calls to mind nature in the concrete. We 

 study analogies and affinities, beauties of adaptation and marvellous 

 homologies, until we forget that after all, these creatures we dissect 

 are not mere pieces of mechanism, but live and breathe, and have 

 affections, and impulses, not absolutely dissimilar to our own. Such 

 a book as this carries us from our skeletons and preparations, back to 

 the recollection of the overflowing life of nature, to the trill of the 

 skylark, and the caw of the rook busy overhead, what time we 

 wandered not too scientifically thoughtful, nor yet without observa- 

 tion, along some green lane, while the hare now and then crossed 

 the path, and the partridge rose whirring from the cornfield. 



To those who take a scientific interest in nature without caring to 

 penetrate into the hidden mysteries of organization, the Rev. Mr. 

 Jenyns's work will be most acceptable. It will find a place on their 

 shelves beside ' The Natural History of Selbourne.' It is full of 

 curious information upon the habits of the denizens of our fields and 

 woods, and some excellent remarks upon "Habits of observing" are 

 prefixed. 



We cannot too heartily applaud the observations upon the import- 

 ance and dignity of facts as such, and apart from any obvious imme- 

 diate bearing (p. 13). Let those who would take the high a-priori 

 road in science bethink them whether it may not be of more import- 

 ance to establish even such a simple fact as that the field cricket 

 " drops its dung on a little platform at the mouth of its hole," than 

 to prop up with quite remarkable ingenuity the hypothesis that the 

 said field cricket is a " mucus animal of the third power — ovum^ ! " 



