162 Bibliographical Notices. 
belongs the author of the modest little octavo whose title stands at 
the head of this article. If Mr. Boner has failed to express himself 
so happily as the writers we have just named, and to invest the sub- 
jects and scenes he describes with the absorbing interest that per- 
vades their works, it is for reasons of which, as critics from a zoological 
point of view, we need not complain, but prefer leaving his occasional 
faults of style to our more exclusively literary brethren, The author 
says in his preface, that he wishes it “to be understood that the book 
is wholly without scientific pretension ;” but we must remark that 
its scientific merits are no less present because they are unassumed.. 
The animals treated of in ‘ Forest Creatures’ are seven in number, 
namely, the Wild Boar, Roe, Red and Fallow Deer, Capereally (we 
prefer the spelling of the old Scottish law-books to our author’s 
** Capercailie,” or to the more common, more inconvenient, and 
equally un-English “Capercailzie”’ ), Black Grouse, and Golden Eagle. 
There is also a chapter headed ‘* Homer a Sportsman,” which might 
be read with pleasure even by Mr. Gladstone; and another of “Hints,” 
which might be read with profit even by Mr. Grantley Berkeley. 
In England we are apt to imagine that none but our own country- 
men have any right to be regarded as sportsmen. Our vanity has 
been flattered by amusing sketches and descriptions of fully-armed 
Frenchmen engaged in the pursuit of skylarks, or of a band of 
German students discharging a volley at a covey-of partridges, from 
which, on the consequent fall of a single victim, the whole body of 
jagers would forthwith burst into a joyous hunting-song, to the 
astonishment of the British spectator. Mr. Boner’s. book may help 
to correct these grossly exaggerated notions, and serve to show that 
there is as much true sportsman-like feeling in Germany as in Eng- 
land. Indeed, it may be shortly said that sporting is peculiar to n 
age and to no nation. ! . 35) 
But we must limit our remarks in this direction, and apply our- 
selves more especially to the zoological points of interest in the work 
we are noticing. Mr. Boner’s account of the Wild Boar is especially 
deserving of attention; for in no modern English works are the pe- 
culiar habits of that ‘knightly beast”? described. Quite recently 
also, doubts, apparently well founded, have been expressed as to 
whether or not our domestic swine have descended from the wild 
Sus serofa*, which even now has an extensive range throughout 
Europe, though there is, we believe, no record of its existence in 
England since the time of the first Plantagenet king, some seven 
hundred years ago. The Boar seems to be somewhat of a favourite 
with our author; and a well-executed representation of its head—no 
inappropriate device at this season of the year—glows on the green 
cover of his work. 
We beg leave to draw the attention of physiologists to what is re- 
corded of the Roe-deer by Mr. Boner. He announces, as “a new 
wonder in natural history,” a discovery which he says has been 
* See Mr. Bartlett’s “ Remarks on the Japanese Masked Pig,” reprinted 
in our last volume (pp. 501, 502) from the ‘ Proceedings of the Zoological 
Society’ for 1861, pp. 263, 264, mL 
