146 THE ORNITHOLOGICAL GUIDE. 



The Natural History of Birds. By Robert Mudie, 4s. 6d. 

 1834. Orr and Smith. 



This little volume is beautifully printed, contains 

 400 pages, is elegantly bound, and full of neatly 

 executed wood cuts — and all this for 4s. 6d. Well 

 has it been said, that " it is the cheapest work that 

 ever issued from the press."* We shall give a sample 

 of the spirit in which our author looks at nature : — 

 " Every production of nature, when rightly studied, 

 becomes, in aftertime, an index to that part of 

 nature in connexion with which it is found, and a 

 bird, as being one the most remarkable of these 

 productions, is more easily suggested to the mind 

 than any other, and more readily brings along with 

 it all the relations of its locality, and all the pheno- 

 mena of the time when it is observed. On this 

 account he who knows all the Birds of the British 

 Islands, in their connexions and relations, can, 

 whenever he is rightly minded, live mentally in all 

 the varied scenes of the British Islands, and, there- 

 fore, enjoy all the pleasure of them, be his bodily 

 locality where it may. He may be on the bleak 

 moor where there is not a shrub, in the close lane of 

 the city where even the sky is barely seen, in the 

 solitude of a prison-house, or laid on a bed of sick- 

 ness, deprived of the use of sight, and with all his 



Tt has however since been eclipsed by a work, which cannot be too 

 highly spoken of — Combe's Constitution of Man, which is now sold 

 for Is. and 6d. ! Two Thousand copies were sold in Ten Days. 



