Notices of New Books. 5343 



skilled naturalist. The reviewer has only to add — 1st, that this 

 beautiful book has been placed in his hands, under the impression 

 that, having made the sea-anemone his especial study in one of those 

 localities so brilliantly described by the author as " one of the plague- 

 courts of London," he would make a competent reviewer of c A Manual 

 of Sea- Anemones ;' and, Sndly, that he sincerely wishes that both 

 Mr. Tugwell and Mr. Kingsley would visit the scenes of their glowing 

 descriptions, and lend their aid in the improvement of much that is 

 really wrong, though not precisely as their brilliant imaginations 

 paint it. What a contrast between their lives and ours ! 



Philactinia. 



1 Tenby: a Sea-side Holiday.'' By Philip Henry Gosse, A.L.S. 

 8vo, 400 pp. letterpress; 24 coloured plates. Price 21s. 

 London: Van Voorst. 1856. 



Mr. Gosse is beyond all comparison the most voluminous writer on 

 Natural History among the present generation of men : his powers are 

 as inexhaustible as his subject. Volume follows volume with a rapidity 

 that is marvellous ; and the last has always the rare merit of appearing 

 the best. What, it will be asked, is there peculiar to Tenby that it 

 should require a book to itself? How does it differ from other sea- 

 sides described in the ' Devonshire Coast' and the ' Aquarium?' To 

 say truth, it is not the locality that differs; it is that this babbling of 

 sea things is found to be pleasant, and doubtless profitable, and this 

 shifting of the scene — this resemblance of novelty — is as necessary as 

 the introduction of new plates and the compilation of new descrip- 

 tions. 



The titles have little to do with the contents, and the books might 

 just as well be intituled 



" One, Two and Three 

 Tales of the Sea," 



as bear the names by which they are now known : they are as like as 

 three peas from the same pod. 



This Tenby volume contains " a detailed record of a summer holiday 

 spent at Tenby. Nearly every day's occupation is set down just as it 

 occurred ; tide-pool explorations, cavern searchings, microscopic 

 examinations, scenery huntings, road-side pryings, — here they all are, 

 a faithful narrative of how the author was engaged for about six weeks 

 at that pleasant little watering-place." 



