198 BIRDS OF THE COUNTRYSIDE 



his feathered friends exterminated for the cabinet and 

 glass-case) need not prejudice the lay mind. The 

 more gently disposed will seek the explanation of a 

 certain quaintness in the squire's personality upon rather 

 different grounds, " quando," as his pious biographer 

 Dr. Hobson remarks, " ullum inveniemus parem ? " 



Except the Wanderings in South America delightfully 

 reviewed by Sydney Smith, a ravishing account of 

 adventures with caymans and boa constrictors in the 

 Guiana wilds, Waterton's works have been seldom re- 

 printed. They consist of three volumes (1838, 1844 

 and 1857) of Essays on Natural History (chiefly about 

 the habits of birds, the National Debt, dressed and 

 served up a la Cobbett, spiced with tart references to 

 the wearing of cravats, and the amours of rattlesnakes). 

 To each of these volumes is prefixed an autobiography, 

 and — as a grand orchestral finale — ^there is a biography 

 by Dr. Hobson, of Leeds, Boswell, physician and friend. 

 The biography is one of those books which are so bad 

 that, like high game, they become as palatable to the 

 literary digestion as the freshest art. There are posi- 

 tively no infinitives in it that are not split. The finny 

 squadrons, the feathered tribes, the vulpine race natate, 

 volitate and perambulate throughout the book, and 

 to read the biographer describing the drolleries of the 

 squire shinning up trees, " whirling himself entirely 

 round in the air," " dropping on one foot " and return- 

 ing " by hopping back on the contrary foot," declaiming, 

 "Non de ponie cadit qui cum sapientia vadit," is almost 

 as good as seeing a hoopoe. 



The greater part is taken up with a survey of 

 Walton Hall, and oh ! in a manner compared to which 

 the magisterial Baedeker is pyjama literature. " My 

 thoughts ... in an occasional leisure hour . . . on 

 paper." No, no. Dr. Hobson ! But we must permit 

 him, without interference, to conduct us round the 

 extensive circumference of a domain so well garnished 

 and populated by an unparalleled assemblage of the 

 feathered tribes. The estate was of an " amphitheat- 

 rical configuration," embellished by a lake, whose " finny 

 contents " therein disported themselves. There, " in. 



