443 
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE. 
Letters Home, from Spain, Algeria, and Brazil, during past Entomo- 
logical Rambles. By the Rev. Hamuet Crark, M.A., F.LS. 
London: Van Voorst. 1867. 
To notice this volume from merely a scientific point of view would 
be an injustice to its lamented author, by whom its contents were 
not intended to convey accurate information available for the pur- 
poses of science. The series of Letters which it embraces were 
addressed principally to an aged father, who had but little scientific 
knowledge, and who probably entertained no special desire to increase 
what he already possessed. But there is a truthfulness and buoyancy 
about their style which at once attest the good faith of the writer, 
who it is impossible not to perceive is a genuine lover of Nature in 
all her phases; whilst his keen appreciation of everything that he 
saw, and the strong dash of the ridiculous, often so graphically ex- 
pressed, which permeates the whole, will more than ‘compensate, in 
the minds of many readers, for the want of that conventional dryness 
which is the rule rather than the exception in so-called ‘‘ scientific ”’ 
publications. 
In his friend John Gray, Esq., who has contributed some interest- 
ing sketches to the present volume, Mr. Clark found, through many 
years, and on several different occasions, a kind and invaluable com- 
one and it was in his yacht the ‘ Miranda,’ while visiting Spain, 
ortugal, and the north of Africa, that about half of these ‘ Letters’ 
were composed. The other half were written during a trip with Mr. 
Gray to Brazil, when, instead of being accompanied by the yacht, they 
took the mail steamer to Rio Janeiro... And on all these various ex- 
peditions their one common point of interest (apart from the pleasure 
of visiting strange countries and enjoying new scenes) appears to 
have been centred in entomology, and especially in Coleoptera. 
It is scarcely possible in a short notice like this to do more than 
call attention to the general plan of Mr. Clark’s volume. He writes 
enthusiastically of the different spots which were visited by himself 
and Mr. Gray; and nothing could be more true to nature, or more 
genial, than some of his humorous descriptions of the places touched 
at in the north of Spain. But it is in Brazil that he is the most 
graphic—when let loose as it were for the first time under a tropical 
sun. ‘‘I cannot describe to you,” says he, on landing at Bahia, 
“the beauties of scenery like this. At some moments I could fancy 
that we had jumped right out of this,dirty world, and had found 
ourselves all at once in the old Hesperides—the islands of the Blest 
—where the fruits are ever ripe, the sun is always bright, and the 
shadows invite repose ; and where plants, and birds, and insects, and 
all created things, are in the perfection of beauty: but as for man, 
as soon as I think of him, I am back again in my natural existence” 
(p. 105). And again, on reaching some famous falls near Constancia, 
in the virgin forest of the Organ Mountains, none but a genuine 
‘student of nature would have written thus :—‘‘ We rested for an hour 
on the rock; we did not talk, hardly spoke a word to each other, 
