16 



truly and humorously recorded, as that of the ' Hen 

 Fever.' As to the descriptive matter, only the book itself 

 — the whole book, read from the title-page to the last 

 claws — can convey any just idea of it. It is fact, philos- 

 ophy and fun, kneaded by a skilful hand into a large mor- 

 sel, which no one will weary of chewing. We have read 

 many diverting and instructive histories, but never have we 

 read so diverting a work on natural history and its connec- 

 tions as this. It ought to be read by everybody." 



The Fireside Journal says, that " what Mr. Burnham 

 now publishes as a ' history ' is essentially his own ' Bar- 

 num Biography ' quoad hoc. It has this advantage, in a 

 literary point of view, over the book of the great Bar- 

 numbo, that it has a unity — a beginning, middle, and end. 

 It is an epic of humbug, in which the machinery of lies is 

 not called in to excite twenty-five cents' worth of curiosity 

 about a bed-ridden old woman, or a woolly horse, but to 

 clothe deformity in feathers, and excite millions with a 

 sleepless anxiety to propagate it." 



The Boston Daily Times, in a long criticism, says, 

 " We believe that the author has stated nothing but what 

 he has had capital reasons for believing to be the truth. 

 The work is more of a whole than most of its author's writ- 

 ings. The various chapters depend upon one another very 

 closely, which is a strong proof of the artistic construction 

 of the work. Of the singular phase in the business life of a 

 "smart" people, Mr. Burnham, who was in the very thick of 

 the whole aifair,— buying and selling, writing and speaking, 

 importing fowls from anywhere, and exporting them to 

 everywhere,— corresponding with the secretary of English 



