Notices of New Books. 5045 



* The World of Insects : a Guide to its Wonders? By J. W. 

 Douglas, Secretary to the Entomological Society of London. 

 London: Van Voorst, 1856. 245 pp. ]2mo. Price 3s. 6d. 



There is not an entomologist, from the Land's End to John-o- 

 Groat's, but will read with pleasure the announcement of a book 

 by Mr. Douglas: one and all will be influenced by a kindly feeling 

 for the man, fully justified by antecedents : and will, furthermore, 

 assuredly expect to find something remarkable, profound, or new, 

 because they have perceived, whenever Mr. Douglas has put pen to 

 paper, promises of something far beyond the average of entomological 

 contributions to our stock of knowledge. Thus, when the curtain is 

 drawn up on his first performance, he will behold a sea of smiling 

 faces prepared to give him a hearty, even an enthusiastic, welcome. 



Now be it know 7 n unto all men, that the "we" of a review is but an 

 individual ; and, moreover, an individual as liable to error as any 

 other ; often the mere man of straw in the rostrum ; and therefore 

 his dictum, however dogmatic, and " dogmatism is nothing more than 

 puppyism matured," is of no value, and can only receive its value in 

 the sequel. Of course, then, the "we" of 'The Zoologist,' on this 

 occasion, is but an individual ; and he does not wish either to com- 

 promise ' The Zoologist' or to injure an author, by the unintentional 

 misuse of a pen, intrusted on this particular occasion to his feeble 

 hand : he has undertaken the task reluctantly, but having undertaken 

 it " Business must be attended to," as Mr. Douglas informs us, in his 

 opening paragraph. 



Well then ! the book is disappointing; yes, reader ! disappointing, 

 because we had formed so high an opinion of the author's abilities 

 that we were sure not to be satisfied with anything that did not soar 

 vastly above mediocrity. Just, however, in inverse proportion to the 

 absence of the remarkable, the profound and the new, is the presence 

 of the agreeable, the seductive, the amusing, and, to many, of the 

 instructive. 



No book could ever be more truly characterized as a compilation, 

 but certainly no compilation ever displayed an author in a more 

 favorable light; he is perfectly at home with every writer who 

 has touched his subject, and passing by the technical, the vapid and 

 the erroneous, as though he saw it not, he reproduces, with great 

 gusto, the original, the vivid and the true. He has Rusticus at his 



