1850 Jenyns' Natural History. 



The Poet Gray's copy of the Sy sterna Natura. — Mason, in his ' Life of the poet 

 Gray,' says in a note, page 321, vol. ii., " I have given in the beginning of this section, 

 an account of the great pains which Mr. Gray bestowed on Natural History. I have 

 since been favoured with a letter from a gentleman, well skilled in science, who, after 

 carefully perusing his interleaved ' Systema Naturae ' of Linnaeus, gives me the cha- 

 racter of it. ' In the class of animals (the Mammalia) he has concentrated (if I may 

 use the expression) what the old writers and the diffuse Buffon have said upon the 

 subject; he has universally adapted the concise language of Linnaeus, and has given 

 it an elegance which the Swede had no idea of; but there is little of his own in this 

 class, and it served him only as a common-place ; but it is such a common-place that 

 few men but Mr. Gray could form. In the birds and fishes he has most accurately 

 described all that he had an opportunity of examining: but the volume of insects is 

 the most perfect; on the English insects there is certainly nothing so perfect. In re- 

 gard to the plants, there is little else than the English names and their native soils, ex- 

 tracted from the ' Species Plantarum ' of Linnaeus. I suppose no man was so com- 

 plete a master of his system ; he had selected the distinguishing marks of each animal, 

 &c. with the greatest judgment, and what no man else probably could have done, he 

 has made the German Latin of Linnaeus purely classical.''' 



[It would be highly creditable to the Eay Society to print a work of this kind : I 

 am told it may be considered public property at least for such a purpose as publication: 

 what a treat it would afford to the British naturalist : how infinitely preferable to some 

 of the useless volumes this Society has issued. — E. Newman]. 



Extracts from Jenyns' Observations on Natural History* 



[The obvious similarity of Mr. Jenyns' work to White's ' Selborne ' has led many 

 reviewers to laud it somewhat too highly : in accuracy and originality it is very infe- 

 rior to its prototype : it is Natural History attenuated, spun out, made into a book : 

 still it has pleasant and useful passages : here they are. — Edward Newman]. 



Lying down of Cattle, fyc. — " The most common occurrences, and such as are 

 brought under our eyes every day, sometimes escape the notice of inobservant persons. 

 A farmer, who had lived all his life among stock, was not aware, till I drew his atten- 

 tion to the fact, that horses and oxen rise from the ground differently. There is a 

 slight difference in their mode of lying down, the horse not generally remaining so long 

 upon his knees as the ox, before bringing the rest of his frame to the ground. But in 

 getting up, the horse invariably rises first upon his fore-legs, before rising upon his 

 hind. The ox, on the contrary, rises first upon the hind, and often remains upon his 

 knees some few seconds until his hind legs are straightened. These differences pro- 

 bably prevail throughout thetwoCuvierian groups of Pachydermata and Ruminantia, 

 to which the horse and ox respectively belong. The elephant and rhinoceros both 

 rise first upon their fore-legs, like the horse ; so does the pig : the sheep, goat, and 

 deer, in this respect, are like the ox." — p. 49. 



* London : Van Voorst, 1846. 



