492 Bthliographical Notices. 



their leisure to scientific investigations, and often with results of the 

 greatest value. In fact nothing can exceed the naive surprise with 

 which foreign savants usually receive the information that some of 

 our most distinguished naturalists hold no Professorship or other 

 recognized scientific position, but that they are simply private indi- 

 viduals. In some cases, however, those of our more wealthy country- 

 men whose tastes lead them to cultivate some particular department 

 of science not only occupy themselves personally with such studies, 

 but also adopt another course, which is perhaps rather more com- 

 prehensible to the minds of our neighbours across the channel : they 

 contribute freely from the wealth which their regular avocations 

 bring them to assist and encourage poorer workers in the same field, 

 or to bring forth the results of investigations which would otherwise 

 be prevented from appearing on account of the cost of publication. 



But although much has been done in this way, individually and 

 collectively, in England, we cannot point in this country to any such 

 munificent patrons of science as Cesar Godeftroy, of Hamburg. This 

 gentleman, belonging to a firm of great merchants and shipowners, 

 trading to the far east, and especially to the islands scattered over the 

 Pacific Ocean, some years ago conceived the notion of making the ex- 

 tended commerce of his firm a means of founding a museum of natural 

 history in his native city ; and having begun by accumulating such 

 specimens as were brought home by the officers in command of their 

 ships, he soon enlarged the plan by sending out competent collectors 

 to various places, and intrusting the care of the valuable specimens 

 thus obtained to naturalists of high attainments. 



As an outcome from these researches, this gentleman commenced 

 in the year 1871 the publication of a journal in large quarto, in- 

 tended to contain communications relating to the geography, ethno- 

 graphy, and general natural history of the countries visited by the 

 Godeffroy collectors ; and of this journal, which is most liberally 

 illustrated, the work of which the title stands at the head of this 

 article forms the third part. 



From the preliminary statement given by the author. Dr. Giinther 

 of the British Museum, it appears that towards the end of last year 

 Hr. C. Godeffroy received a collection of about 470 figures of fishes, 

 coloured from the life by Mr. Andrew Garrett during a residence of 

 several years as a natural-history collector in the Sandwich and 

 Society Islands and in other parts of Polynesia. These drawings 

 (which confirm the account given by Cook in the history of his last 

 voyage of the magnificence of the fishes observed about the coral- 

 reefs of Palmerston Island), and the colours of the fishes especially, 

 are reproduced with the greatest patience and truthfulness — Dr. 

 Giinther, when asked to undertake the determination of the species, 

 having ascertained, by the comparison of many of them with other 

 figures also taken from the life, that Mr. Garrett's drawings were 

 perfectly trustworthy in this respect. As regards the structural 

 characters of the objects represented, and especially the number and 

 direction of the rows of scales, the drawings were hardly so satisfac- 

 tory ; and these details had to be corrected by comparison with pre- 



