1045 



* The Sea-weed Collector s Guide : containiinj Plain Inshuciionfi for 

 Collectiin/ and Preserving, and a List of all the known Spe- 

 cies and Localities in Great Britain. By J. Cocks, M.D., 

 Devonport. London : John Van Voorst, 1, Paternoster Row. 

 1853.' 



It is recorded of some modern Zoilus, that he quaintly charac- 

 terized a book he was reviewing as containing " many things both 

 new and true;" but then, as a kind of set-oif to this modicum of 

 " faint praise," he goes on to say that " the netv things are not tri(e, 

 neither are the true things new.'" Now we would by no means be 

 understood to insinuate that the new things in Dr. Cocks's ' Guide ' 

 are not true ; neither would we quarrel with his true things because 

 they are not new : his little book is indeed confessedly a compilation 

 from standard works of acknowledged high character, and the name 

 of Dr. Harvey is a sufficient guarantee for the intrinsic value of the 

 ample extracts from that gentleman's published works on the British 

 Algae, which we meet with in many parts of the ' Guide.' These 

 quotations are, we believe, in all cases accompanied by an acknow- 

 ledgment. Such an acknowledgment, indeed, is no more than the 

 due of an author whose labours are appropriated by followers in the 

 same field of research as himself: it is, to say the least of it, a grace- 

 ful compliment to those who have cleared the way for their succes- 

 sors, and should in no case be withheld ; although, as it appears to 

 us, our author has not in every instance stated the source whence his 

 materials have been derived. 



Dr. Cocks gives some plain and useful directions for collecting and 

 preserving the marine Alga?, which will greatly assist the young algo- 

 logist in the preparation of his specimens. Very few of the directions 

 for drying the AlgaB can however be classed among the 7iew things of 

 the book ; at all events, they bear a very striking family likeness to 

 similar instructions given by Dr. Drummond, in a valuable paper 

 published in the ' Magazine of Zoology and Botany ' for 1838 (ii. 144). 

 This likeness is, indeed, so strong, that we can hardly persuade our- 

 selves that they belong to that class of undesigned coincidences which 

 every now and then occur in the writings of independent labourers on 

 kindred subjects. A few of these parallel passages we quote below, 

 premising that we have Ltalicised such phrases as are the more 

 striking from their close similarity, we might say, their identity. 

 VOL. IV. 6 s 



