Bibliographical Notice. 141 



the Sponges and Rhizopods, he works his way upwards through 

 the different classes and orders, describing a few of the most striking 

 species in each, in such a way as to furnish his readers not merely 

 with a desultory sketch of a few animal forms, but with a very 

 finished picture of the zoology of the sea. Tims we not only find 

 in his pages striking and elegant descriptions of the various sjpecies 

 of marine animals which are adapted for the purposes of the aqua- 

 riist, but exceedingly graphic accounts of their habits, mode of life, 

 and especially of their development ; and what renders the work 

 of particular value in this respect is the introduction of a feature 

 which we have long thought to be a desideratum in books of the 

 same nature, namely tliat in addition to information as to what is 

 known upon the creatures referred to, the author has also furnished 

 his readers with an indication of the ])oint at which our present 

 knowledge stops, and of the direction in which further observations 

 should be pursued, so that the keeper of aquaria, who may have the 

 opportunity of observing some animal the history of which is still 

 imperfect, may learn at once from its pages to what to direct his 

 attention. 



Of the numerous passages which we had marked for extraction, our 

 space will only allow us to furnish one or two. Here is a specimen 

 of the mode in which our author elevates one of the commonest ob- 

 jects of the shore : — 



" The naturalist who confines his attention to the larger and more 

 conspicuous forms of marine productions, neglecting those which, 

 from their minuteness, require the aid of a microscope for their ex- 

 amination, would be but little able to appreciate the scene exhibited 

 upon the exterior of many ordinary shells, when, freshly imported 

 from their home beneath the waves, they are perused attentively with 

 a magnifying-glass. The wonderful variety of animal life that crowds 

 every portion of the surface of some of them, affords a spectacle well 

 calculated to astonish any observer who for the first time contem- 

 plates such a scene ; and when, upon closer inspection, we perceive 

 how actively employed they all appear, how all find room for life and 

 for enjoyment on the little stage that forms their world, unkno'^ing 

 all beyond, as if creation was confined to them, a reflection by no 

 means unnatural will sometimes steal across the mind, that we our- 

 selves are imaged in their condition, and in their ignorance of what 

 is passing in surrounding nature beyond the sphere of their immediate 

 neighbourhood. 



" Six thousand years have passed since man was placed upon this 

 sublunary scene — ages untold have rolled away since these little zoo- 

 phytes began to live, and toil, and die, and leave behind inscribed in 

 every stone the record of their industry ; and yet two centuries have 

 not elapsed since man for the first time suspected their existence — 

 since man first l)ecame aware that such things are, much less that 

 such things had been, and had perished. Surely the sage was not 

 far wrong who said, that science was a little boy employed in picking 

 up pebbles upon the shore, as specimens of the vast wealth concealed 

 beneath the hmitless expanse of ocean." 



