The Zoologist — October, 1866. 429 



"Here the nightingale pays its annual and cordially welcome visit, 

 and is listened to at the Hall evening after evening, with infinite 

 pleasure, melodiously warbling its charming song in its silent and 

 secure retreat. 



" Whence is it that amazed I hear, 

 From yonder wilher'd spray, 

 This foremost morn of all the year, 

 The melody of May ? 



But thee no wintry skies can harm, 



Who only need'st to sing 

 To make e'en January charm, 



And every season spring." — p. 86. 



Now either this quotation is totally without meaning, and merely 

 thrown in for effect, or it is intended to convey the idea that at Walton 

 Hall the nightingale sings from a withered spray on New Year's Day : 

 we entirely acquit the Squire of any participation in this unfortunate 

 blunder. 



There is one subject treated at some length in this volume, on which 

 we can cordially agree with the sentiments expressed by the Squire and 

 his biographer : we allude to Mr. Waterton's reception of the impostor 

 Green, a name endeared to all the wonder-mongers of Natural History. 

 So manifest has been the success attendant on this man's skilful con- 

 struction of toad-holes and toad-narratives, that the " toad-in-stone" 

 fiction may be said to be indebted to him for more than half of its 

 present popularity. Green is the Newton, the Cuvier, the DeCandolle 

 of a science he may be said to have made peculiarly his own. 



"About the year 1847 or 1848 a clever and ingenious fellow, living 

 in Leeds, of the name of Green, very adroitly duped some would-be- 

 scientific proficients, who, it was then said, modestly estimated their 

 own natural-history attainments at no inferior rate ; but the sequel will 

 better inform us on this delicate point. Green cleverly managed to 

 accomplish his mechanical labour, and to gain his ends for a time, 

 among those self-esteemed cognoscente with considerable ability and 

 decided success, in the following manner. 



" He destroyed a toad, without in any way disfiguring it, and having 

 procured a large block of coal, he split it into two parts; he then 

 neatly excavated a portion in the lower half, the form and size of this 

 indentation being precisely adapted to correspond with that of the toad, 

 into which cavity he placed the reptile already prepared for its berth, 



