NATURE 



457 



THURSDAY, MARCH i6, 1893. 



MACPHERSON'S FAUNA OF LAKELAND. 

 A Vertebrate Fauna of Lakeland, including Cumberland 

 and Westmoreland, with Lancashire North of the 

 Sands. By the Rev. H. A. Macpherson, M.A., with a 

 Preface by R. S. Ferguson, F.S.A. (Edinburgh : D. 

 Douglas, 1892.) 



INTRODUCED to the vocabulary of naturalists by 

 Mr. H. Cottrell Watson, more than fifty years ago, 

 and that in the most prosaic way, the word " Lakes," as 

 the name of an English district, still keeps its poetic j 

 fragrance, which is perhaps even intensified by its 

 modern modification into " Lakeland," notwithstanding 

 the very technical prefix, as in the title of this book, of 

 " A Vertebrate Fauna." One is naturally led to think of 

 that school of versifiers whose early efforts excited so 

 many conflicting feelings when the century was young, 

 but whose later lays have at length brought conviction of 

 their worthiness to the minds of most. One of their 

 company, he who furnishes the motto of this journal, has 

 especially been hailed as the Poet of Nature, and not 

 only does the fame of Wordsworth wax yearly, but there 

 are those who greet every line he wrote with adulation. 

 To such admirers the author of the book before us will 

 seem to have missed his opportunity, in that we fail to 

 find in the whole volume any indication of the penulti- 

 mate Poet Laureate having ever belonged to the " Verte- 

 brate Fauna of Lakeland." Does this signify that 

 naturalists are not poetical or that the great " Poet of 

 Nature" was not a naturalist? The question is so 

 momentous that we leave it for consideration by our 

 readers, not daring to vouchsafe a reply, nor venturing 

 to suggest to Mr. Macpherson that he has been wrong in 

 resisting the temptation to illustrate his work by quota- 

 tions, that might be gathered by the handful from the 

 thousands of verses which flowed from the pen of the 

 " bard of Rydal," or any of his brethren. 



We must acknowledge that we took up this volume 

 with a slight prepossession against it. We did not see 

 why Mr. Macpherson, already the joint author of a well- 

 known and well-esteemed little book on the " Birds of 

 Cumberland," to say nothing of various contributions to 

 Natural History journals, should need a preface for his new 

 work by a gentleman who — whatever may be his legal and 

 antiquarian renown (which we believe to be not small) — 

 is entirely unknown as a naturalist, and it seemed to us 

 as though a kind of sub-episcopal imprimatur, which 

 would be derogatory to a man of science, had been sought 

 from the Chancellor of the diocese of Carlisle. We have 

 been glad to find this suspicion, perhaps ill-natured in its 

 inception, wholly unfounded as we became acquainted 

 with the contents, and we hereby make confession of our 

 error, duly cautioning all others, and there may be a good 

 many of them to whom the same thought may occur or have 

 occurred, that any such hesitation is unnecessary. The 

 Preface, it is true, contains a benediction, but none can 

 say it is a benediction that is undeserved. The book is 

 a real honest book, and one that no true zoologist can fail 

 to discover has been wrought at with conscientious care, 

 NO. 1220, VOL. 47] 



unbounded labour, and a deep sympathy with the subject. 

 We are not going to hold it up as a model " Fauna " ; 

 there is evidence, notwithstanding what we have just said, 

 of too much haste in its composition for that ; but it 

 certainly belongs to the first class of books of its kind, 

 while, should it be the author's good fortune to have 

 another edition demanded, a severe revision might give it 

 a high place in that class. We do not assume ourselves 

 to be purists in style, but it does seem to us that the 

 English language, as written by men of acknowledged 

 literary merit, is wide enough to cover every shade of 

 meaning, without the least necessity of bringing in words 

 or phrases that border upon slang, and certainly without 

 using slipshod expressions that, if not altogether inap- 

 propriate, are in many cases vague and therefore un- 

 seemly in a book that may fairly claim to rank among 

 scientific works. We assure the author in all good will 

 that these shortcomings, which might be so easily 

 remedied, greatly diminish the pleasure we derive from 

 reading his volume. 



Apart from Mr. Ferguson's scholarly Preface, the book 

 opens with more than one hundred pages of Prolegomena, 

 and we are mistaken if the greater part of these will not 

 prove to have greater interest for that incomprehensible 

 person the General Reader than all that follow — the par- 

 ticulars given in the bulk of the volume being mostly of 

 especial and local value. Not that we use this last epi- 

 thet in any invidious sense, for what should a local 

 Fauna be but local ? and Mr. Macpherson has avoided a 

 great error (into which the authors of some modern local 

 Faunas have fallen), by rightly taking it for granted that 

 the zoological readers who will use his book do not want 

 to be instructed on points or matters concerning which 

 they can obtain full information from many other and 

 more original sources, and thus he is able to husband his 

 space for particular details, which are given in most cases 

 with great precision. But first of these Prolegomena afore- 

 said—They begin, as every book of this sort ought, with 

 what is practically a history of the subject ; for it is a 

 biographical notice of former Lakelandish worthies who 

 have contributed to the Vertebrate Zoology of their 

 district, and of these there is a good show ; though there 

 is no wonder that the earliest writers on the subject should 

 possess but little scientific knowledge. It is not every 

 county that can produce a Willughby, a Sir Thomas 

 Browne, or still less a John Ray — but probably the earliest 

 of the naturalists celebrated by Mr. Macpherson were 

 the equals of Charleton, Plot, or Leigh— all men worthy 

 to be praised in their own line. Yet setting aside these 

 lesser lights, many of whom are lost to view in the glare 

 that radiates from their successors, the two Heyshams 

 (John, born 1753, died 1834, and Thomas Coulthard, 

 born I79i,died 1857), and the two Coughs (John and 

 Thomas, whose joint lives cover all but a century and a 

 quarter, 1757-1880) — in each case father and son — were 

 men deserving commemoration in any county, and the 

 biographical notice of all four, written in excellent taste, 

 will be gladly read by many who are not naturalists at all. 

 For our own part we cannot help wishing that these 

 biographical details had been longer ; but the papers of 

 the elder Heysham are not forthcoming, neither is the 

 manuscript Cumberland Ornithology, which the younger 

 is supposed to have left at his death. The former, if still 



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