7sr 



PART 11. 



REVIEWS. 



Art. I. Catalogue of Works on Natural History f lately published, 

 with some Notice of those considered the most interesting to British 

 Naturalists. 



Britain. 



Transactions of the Plinian Society. Session 1828-9. Edin. 8vo, pp. 40. 

 We have already (Vol. I. p. 291.) given some account of the origin and 

 intention of this Society ; and having from time to time been favoured 

 with papers read before it, we have only to express our satisfaction at the 

 evidence of prosperity afforded by the present publication. None of the 

 papers read before the Society are printed at length in their Transactions ; 

 but abstracts are always given, in the very judicious and useful manner 

 adopted by the Geological Society of London. 



Rhind, William, Member of the Royal Medical and Royal Physical Societies 

 of Edinburgh : Studies in Natural History ; exhibiting a Popular View 

 of the most striking and interesting Objects of the Material World. Ulus- 



. trated by ten engravings. Edinburgh. Small 8vo. 6*. 



This work is got up, no doubt, with the best intentions ; it might perhaps 

 have passed for something thirty years ago, but it is far from coming up to 

 the taste and science of the present day. Fourteen sections treat of nature 

 generally, reproductive powers, geology, the atmosphere, rain, &c., an 

 autumn day, vegetables, birds, the ocean, insects, bees and ants, winter, 

 man, and the city and country. The first section commences with the fol- 

 lowing sentence. " If we could suppose a human being in the full posses- 

 sion of all his faculties, and in the maturity of his judgment, led to an 

 eminence, and for the first time made to behold the earth and the sky, the 

 waving trees, sparkling waters, green meadows, and the happy sporting 

 of birds and animals, what would be his expressions of wonder, delight, 

 and admiration ! " Would it be too much to say that this is most un- 

 scientific ? What would be the value or the extent of the man's wonder 

 or admiration, who saw for the first time things with the nature of which he 

 was unacquainted ? It is only by a knowledge of nature intimately and 

 in detail, that we can admire rationally ; the " expressions of wonder," of 

 ignorance, afford but a momentary gratification, because they cannot reach 

 further than the senses. In the concluding section, on the City and the 

 Country, it is said, " Compare the mild, peaceful, rosy-faced rustic, sitting 

 by his door after the summer day's labour is over, fondling his little ones 

 on his knee, to the pallid, fierce-looking, and turbulent frequenter of the 

 city gin-shop, or the ragged and demoralised inhabitants of the close and 

 crowded alley." It is too late in the day for this sort of sentimentalism ; 

 the comparison would not be fair, unless it were made between persons of 

 equal education and equal command of the necessaries of life, in which case, 

 we can assert from observation, that ^he inhabitant of the " closte and 



