7.2 Bibliographical Notices. 



Waterton, Darwin and Gosse have earned laurels. The chief ohject 

 of this class of works is to please while they instruct, to enliven as 

 well as to enlighten, to awaken as well as to cherish a love for 

 natural history. Along with Kirby and Spence, and in the same list 

 with Alexander Wilson the American ornithologist, the authors spe- 

 cified above and the writer at the head of this article may be placed. 



A popular writer is too often deemed by the mere scientific man, 

 not profound, and there may be at times some truth in it ; Mr. Bro- 

 derip however is not superficially acquainted with some of the chapters 

 of the book of nature. He is well known as a scientific conchologist, 

 whose very fine collection of shells, many of them originally described 

 by himself, were acquired by Parliament for the nation and deposited 

 in the British Museum. His writings and compilations in the Cy- 

 clopaedia of the Useful Knowledge Society have done much to diffuse 

 a taste for natural history, and in the work before us, leaving for a 

 time strict science, he delights us with many pleasing chapters on 

 birds and beasts. 



There are two excellent chapters on our resident and migratory 

 singing-birds, right pleasant reading at this time of year, from the 

 associations they call up of spring and summer. He discourses 

 pleasantly on owls, a grave subject ; and from chattering, gay- 

 coloured parrots and parrakeets turns to gobbling turkeys or bub- 

 bly jocks, one of which, the ocellated turkey (Meleagris ocellatus), 

 he strongly urges some patriotic individual to introduce to this 

 country. The Earl of Derby has one specimen in his noble aviary 

 and menagerie at Knowsley, but we fear that the bird is a widow, and 

 likely long to continue so : it is strange that his lordship has been 

 hitherto unsuccessful in finding a mate for this bird. From swans, 

 wild and tame, which 



" on sweet St. Mary's Lake," 



and on other lakes and streams as well, 



" float double, swan and shadow," 



our author most undesignedly passes to a chapter of advice to anglers, 

 — a fertile theme, unexhausted and inexhaustible, as witness the 

 writings of Izaak Walton, Sir Humphry Davy — how Walton would 

 have loved the chemist, and the sculptor Sir Francis Chantrey, even 

 although he wrote no ' Salmonia ' ! — of Mr. Yarrell, of Scrope, of 

 John Wilson (the renowned Christopher North), of Jesse, cum myitis 

 aliis — " Good luck to your fishing:" there seems to be some free- 

 masonry in the thing itself, and there is certainly something most 

 attractive in the subject. 



Whether the spring-filled song on the bonny month of May in 

 page 172, immediately after the " Word to Anglers," be the buoyant 

 spirits that flow from the subject just touched upon, we know not, 

 but the five stanzas come in most opportunely and read most plea- 

 santly. We have not got half through the book, and must leave dogs 

 and cats, (surely Mr. Broderip, like Jeremy Bentham, is a bachelor,) 

 apes and monkeys, and the grave, gigantic and graphically described 

 elephants, for another notice ; with three chapters on Dragons, Mr. 



