2048 , Quadrupeds. 



for the display of wit ; secondly, a too perfect reliance on the dicta of others. The first 

 leads to the introduction of many passages which are totally irrelevant, as for instance 

 that about " bores," and one entire chapter entitled " a word to anglers." Adapting 

 my phraseology to the author's, I would say such parts of the book are very " wet- 

 blanketty." The second induces Mr. Broderip to reproduce, among others of the like 

 kind, Daines Barrington's fallacy about birds studying their songs under parental tu- 

 ition, and to follow up the matter by showing that birds brought up from the egg by 

 hand are either mute or learn the notes of the first prattler that comes in their way : 

 if this were true, the countless myriads of chickens hatched by the new steam process 

 would learn, from the women and children who tend them, all manner of metropolitan 

 small-talk ; whereas the dame partletts and chanticleers cackle and crow in the veri- 

 table method of their progenitors : ducks, again, that are hatched under hens squeak 

 and quack in the true style of their kind, though they never enjoyed the advantage of 

 parental tuition ; and guinea-fowls hatched under a barn-door hen, miles from the 

 nearest of their congeners, seem to feel acutely the bereavement of kindred, and in- 

 cessantly invite them to ' come-back,' ' come-back.' Mr. Broderip, however, is a com- 

 piler of much skill ; and though a greater extent of practical experience would have 

 added value to his volume, we must not forget that his opportunities for observation 

 have not been those of a White, a Waterton, a Knapp, a Couch, an Atkinson or a 

 Bury, — men who have so eminently succeeded throughout their natural-history writ- 

 ings in blending the strikingly agreeable and the perfectly intelligible with the 

 strictly true. Tt is very difficult, immersed in a Babylon like ours, to appreciate justly 

 the assertions and hypotheses of others, — to know what is dross and what pure ore, — 

 to separate the wheat from the chaff; and that one who cannot appeal to the test of 

 observation should occasionally fail in this, is matter neither for surprise nor for harsh 

 comment. I rejoice that so able a pen and so educated a mind have given to Zoology 

 the advantage of their assistance ; and I hope that Mr. Broderip will pursue the 

 course he has taken, and prosper therein. I will quote a few paragraphs written in 

 the author's best style, and hope to return to the volume should I ever find space for 

 more.— E. N.~\ 



" American Monkeys. — Many of the forests of South America flourish in all their 

 primitive grandeur. Immense tracts are covered with vegetable forms in every stage 

 of luxuriant development. Towering trees, their trunks embraced by gigantic twin- 

 ers and garlanded by a profusion of plants, in whose curious and splendid blossoms 

 Nature seems to have imitated in the wantonness of her prodigality almost every va- 

 riety of insect shape, shoot up and darken the light of day with their broad shadows. 



" In these * boundless contiguities of shade,' which have never echoed to the 

 woodman's axe, the most perfect silence reigns during the day ; a silence, unbroken 

 save by the crashing fall of some ancient tree prostrated by the weight of years, and 

 carrying with it in one vast ruin all that it had long fed and fostered. 



" But, if all is silent during the day, at night 



' The wonted roar is up amidst the woods, 

 And fills the air with barbarous dissonance ; ' 



for in the depths of these solitudes live the howling monkeys, to whose voice the voice 

 of the Rev. Gabriel Kettledrummle would be but as the sough of the wind in the 

 bracken. 



