5 1 8G Notices of New Books. 



1 On the Variation of Species, with especial reference to the Insect a ; 

 followed by an Inquiry into the Nature of Genera? By T. 

 Vernon Wollaston, M.A., F.L.S. 206 pp., 12mo, price 5s. 

 London : Van Voorst. 1856. 



Mr. Vernon Wollaston is one of that very limited number of ento- 

 mologists who have ventured to look for something in Entomology be- 

 yond the knowledge of differences. No one has studied differences more 

 thoroughly ; but the mass appear to regard differences as the end ; 

 whereas Mr. Wollaston masters them as the means to some other end, 

 — as the letters by which he is eventually to acquire a more perfect 

 knowledge of the language of Nature. He is not even himself yet 

 master of his great requirings: he states a main object as the desire 

 to induce British entomologists to enlist themselves in the cause of 

 insect geography ; whereas he exhibits in every page an unsatisfied 

 yearning after a more intimate acquaintance with all Nature's laws, 

 the distribution of forms being but a branch of the almost boundless 

 study. Rare, indeed, is the union of the talents which Mr. Wollaston 

 has displayed in his entomological career. How many are there who 

 emulate his zeal in acquiring the knowledge of difference, without any 

 idea of making that knowledge subserve an ulterior object! How 

 many lay down laws for Nature with a brilliancy of imagination that 

 dazzles all beholders, but stay not to acquire that rudimentary know- 

 ledge of facts by which alone their speculations can possibly be 

 tested ! 



The present work, as shown by the title, treats of two very different 

 subjects, the "Variation of Species" and the "Nature of Genera." 

 The one has insensibly led the author to the other. In the first Mr. 

 Wollaston is "at home," in the second he is "at sea;" and yet such 

 is the propensity in man to take omne ignotum pro magnifico that the 

 second will be admired far more than the first ; and the admirers will 

 charge on the non-admirers that very incapability which induces their 

 own admiration. To the man who believes in the hereditary trans- 

 mission of form, there is a definite idea of species unknown to him who 

 believes his great-great-great-grandfather may have been a plesiosaur 

 or a pterodactyle ; but there is no such definite idea connected with 

 the word genus. It is curious to observe that every advocate of what 

 might be called the naturalness of genera has a view of his own as to 

 what a genus is ; thus, place on a board a number of scarabaeoid, sta- 

 phylinoid or cerambycoid beetles, and no two coleopterists shall make 



