298 REVIEWS. [December, 



of natural things^ like the division of labour, may be carried too 

 far ; and that, among the multiplicity of classes, alliances, groups, 

 orders, suborders, tribes, subtribes, genera, species, and varieties, 

 almost all founded on minute, wiredrawn distinctions, a botanist 

 of tlie tyrocinian class would no more be able to thread his way, 

 than a London or Birmingham artisan would succeed in finding 

 his way through the backwoods of Canada, or contrive to make 

 the timber and the ground where it grows minister to his 

 support. 



The Natural History Review for October. London : Williams 

 and Norgate. Dublin : Hodges, Smith, and Co. 



This number, though a double one, contains but little of inte- 

 rest to botanists. The zoologists will be pleased with it. Among 

 the reviews there is one on marine and freshwater Aquaria, by 

 various authors, viz. ' Popular Account of the Aquarium,^ by G. 

 B. Sowerby ; ' The Common Objects of the Sea,' by the Rev. J. 

 G. Wood, M.A. ; ' Ocean Gardens,' by H. Noel Humphreys, and 

 ' E-iver Gardens,' by the same author. This review contains cer- 

 tain stinging observations on the folly of some people who want 

 to become teachers before being scholars, and to instruct man- 

 kind before they have learned what to teach and how to teach it, 

 to deck themselves in borrowed plumes like the jackdaw, and then 

 strut about the yard the derision and sport of all the fowls. 

 Much good may this review do those who most need it ! One of 

 these authors predicts that the " day shall arrive when we shall see 

 the living behemoth" (we thought that the behemoths were all 

 dead and changed into stone, myriads of ages ago), " the Titan of 

 the deep, rolling majestic in waves of his native element, perhaps 

 pursued by his cruel enemy the sword-fish" (a slight symptom of 

 the bathos here), '' or harried by a shoal of herrings, graphically 

 exemplifying to a London crowd the origin of Yarmouth bloaters ; 

 or we may see the dreaded shark float round and round the vast 

 glass prison, and the shark-hunter of the South Seas may be im- 

 ported to exhibit his skill in a bloodless combat" (nice and cheer- 

 ing drawing-room pets) , etc. etc. " We have had, and have still, 

 our crystal palaces covering their acres and filled with objects of 

 art from all quarters of the globe ; it is not impossible therefore 

 that we may have crystal- walled seas, in which aquatic menage- 



