8130 Notices oj New Books. 



point we neglect our opporUinities, future naturalists will justly re- 

 proach us. The mere possession of a few skins or eggs, more or less, 

 is as nothing. Our Science demands something else — that we shall 

 transmit to posterity a less perishable inheritance. I have to urge, in 

 no spirit of partiality, but purely in the cause of knowledge, the claims 

 of our own country in this event. Our metropolis possesses the best- 

 stocked vivarium in the world. An artist residing among us is un- 

 questionably the most skilful animal draughtsman of this or any other 

 period. By common consent the greatest comparative anatomist of 

 the day is the naturalist who superintends the nation's zoological 

 collection. Surely no more fitting repository for the very last of the 

 great auks could be found than the Gardens of the Zoological Society 

 of London, where living they would be immortalized by Mr. Wolf's 

 pencil, and dead be embalmed in a memoir from Professor Owen's 

 pen. 



Allred Newton. 

 ElvedoD, August 8, 1861. 



Notices of New Books. 



' Memoir of the Rev. John Stevens Henslow, M.A., F.L.S.' By the 

 Rev. Leonard Jenyns, M.A., F.L.S., &c. London : Van 

 Voorst. 1862. 278 pp., post 8vo, with photograph portrait. 



Professor Henslow was one of those men whose unostentatious 

 zeal in the cause of Science, whose kindness of disposition and whose 

 willingness to assist the learner, have won for him golden opinions 

 from all who enjoyed the advantage of his society. A distinguishing 

 characteristic of this humble-minded man was his entire indifference 

 to scientific renown : with the single exception of Botany, he neither 

 aimed at nor attained a profound knowledge of the Natural-History 

 sciences ; but he acquired a very general acquaintance with all of 

 them, and imparted his knowledge with a freedom and a grace that 

 endeared him to every learner. We could have wished the office of 

 biographer of Henslow had fallen into other hands ; to the writer of 

 this notice, and we think to the world of naturalists generally, it 

 would have been far more acceptable to have had a memoir of 

 Henslow from one who could have understood and appreciated the 

 rnitid of Henslow, than from one who regards as merit his having 

 caught a Camberwell beauty in his own garden, and a snail which 

 bears the name of Henslowiana, — horrid and barbarous appel- 



