Notices of New Books. 4693 



exceedingly partial to him." — p. 13. After three or four "good houses" 

 in Bridgewater, the company, with the exception of Baker, toured the 

 neighbourhood, performing in Cannington, Stowey, Wiveliscombe and 

 Crowcombe. "Here, then," continues the narrator, "in barns and 

 village inns, were displayed the youthful talents of the future prop of 

 Drury Lane — the magnet of attraction, the star before whose brightness 

 all rival influences were to become pale." This talented and agree- 

 able young Cary of course became Edmund Kean : whether he 

 changed his name by Act of Parliament or by what other process this 

 deponent knoweth not. 



In 1804 Baker marched with his regiment, as second fife, to Taunton, 

 and while stationed there on what he calls " permanent duty," began 

 his first entomological collecting. In 1805 a second march to Taunton 

 was effected, and " I had now attained," he writes, " to the honour 

 which I had been ambitious of; I took my place at the right hand of 

 the front line of our little band, and was its leader." 



He, however, very soon gave up soldiering, and obtained employ- 

 ment as a journeyman currier in London ; and his account of attending 

 lectures, especially against the use of gas, then proposed for street 

 illumination, is curious. " Every possible evil was prognosticated 

 from explosions and poisonous exhalations. In proof of this, birds, 

 rabbits, and other animals were exhibited to audiences under bell- 

 glasses, and an atmosphere of gas admitted to the luckless prisoners 

 in their confined cells, and, as foretold, death of course speedily fol- 

 lowed." — p. 36. What reader of the ' Zoologist,' residing in any of our 

 large towns, has not since seen the same scenes enacted against rail- 

 ways ? Some patriotic gentleman, selected for oratorical power, pre- 

 siding in the chair, eloquently describing railways as an invention of 

 the Evil One, and lashing the butchers, bakers and tailors into a whirl- 

 wind of phrenzy at the idea of London mutton chops, London penny 

 rolls and London trowsers being introduced into their hitherto peaceful 

 homesteads ! then, in sepulchral intonations, describing their wives as 

 inmates of unions, and their children as begging bread. Baker neither 

 liked London nor the anti-gas agitation ; he was surprised at the want 

 of knowledge exhibited by the lecturers ; he was startled at the ob- 

 stinate resistance to what he considered so great a boon : and he 

 records that his friend Bowen from that time contracted an aversion 

 to lectures and lecturers, with but few exceptions, which he never 

 overcame. He pined for the country, and soon had an opportunity of 

 leaving London on what is usually called " the tramp," seeking, and 

 sometimes obtaining, employment in the larger towns, as, for instance, 

 XIII. Y 



