5046 Notices of New Books. 



fingers' ends, and gives him a marked preference : he cites Rusticus 

 on the apple weevil ; Rusticus on the apple moth ; Rusticus on the 

 American blight; Rusticus on the gooseberry grub; Rusticus on the 

 burying beetle ; Rusticus on the tiger beetle. Side by side with these, 

 are long extracts from Smith's admirable Catalogue of Bees, and, like 

 the two great landscape painters, ancient and modern, lately placed 

 in similar juxtaposition in our National Gallery, these two word- 

 painters of insect-life, writers of the past and present generation, 

 detract nothing from the merits of each other. But while noticing 

 the extent of these citations, it is but justice to Mr. Douglas to 

 say that they are always made with the most perfect fairness ; chapter 

 and verse are given with scrupulous accuracy ; and the shade of 

 Rusticus, once disturbed in its rest, by the award of a pension and a 

 salary to the two arch pilferers of his treasures, must rejoice in finding 

 that he has at last found a commentator and quoter who fully 

 and honestly adopts the motto of suum cuique. 



Let not the reader, however, for a moment apprehend that the 

 ' World of Insects ' is filled with quotations : it is not so : quotations 

 there are in abundance, but they are connected together by the 

 happiest interludes ; they are pearls indeed, but pearls strung together 

 on a thread of the richest gold. Mr. Douglas seems to possess 

 a mine of wit, and that of the purest ore. Wit, or the assumption of 

 it, is the attribute, or perhaps, the weakness of entomologists, and is 

 most diversified in its development ; the wit of one is cumbrous, 

 reminding us of the gambols of an elephant ; the wit of another 

 is caustic and practical, developing itself in unpleasant words : the wit 

 of another, 



" like a polished razor keen, 

 Wounds with a touch that 's scarcely felt or seen ;" 



but the wit of Douglas wounds not at all, — it plays around its object 

 like the luminous, but innocuous, flash of summer lightning. 



The book is divided into twelve chapters: — the House: the Garden: 

 the Orchard and Fruit Garden : the Fields : the Hedges and Lanes : 

 the Fences: the Heaths and Commons: the Downs: the Woods: 

 the Waters : the Sea-Shore : the Mountains. We give a short 

 extract from " the Garden," an extract which fairly exhibits the 

 spirit pervading the whole. 



"The garden being an artificial assemblage of certain plants within 

 a restricted space, there to be cultivated for the sake of their foliage, 

 flowers or fruit, it follows that all the insects attached thereto have 



