524 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



possess and know so well. The feature of this edition is that it 

 is edited by one who was a literary man first and a naturalist 

 afterwards, though this was the irony of Mr. Grant Allen's life, 

 and, could he have lived up to his tastes, the arrangement would 

 probably have been reversed. Gilbert White's masterpiece, how- 

 ever, appeals to the literary taste as much as it belongs to the 

 science of natural history, and it is very questionable whether it 

 would have obtained its immortality had its pure and charming 

 style not have recorded its wealth of observation. This editor 

 has a sympathetic touch with his author, and he is not far from 

 his subject when he writes of " the life of a quiet, well-to-do, 

 comparatively unoccupied, gentleman of cultivated manners and 

 scientific tastes, studying nature at his ease in his own domain, 

 untroubled by trains, by telegrams, by duns, by domestic worries; 

 amply satisfied to give up ten years of his life to settling some 

 question of ornithological detail, and well pleased if in the end 

 his conclusions are fortunate enough to meet the approval of the 

 learned Mr. Pennant, or the ingenious Mr. Barrington." 



This book is well printed on good paper, and with wide 

 margins ; the illustrations are profuse, and enable us to almost 

 master the present aspects of Selborne and its vicinity, but these 

 are far superior to those given of zoological subjects. It is a 

 good copy to possess, and those who care to make marginal notes 

 will appreciate the appendix of the "Marginalia" from Samuel 

 Taylor Coleridge's copy here printed for the first time. Of course 

 we expect something original from Coleridge, and we are not dis- 

 appointed. " Instinct is the wisdom of the species, not of the 

 individual," is an anticipation of modern thought ; while the keen 

 but delightful criticism of the lines at the end of Letter XLL, 

 commencing, " Say, what impels, amidst surrounding snow," is 

 simply " a noble paraphrase of 'Z don't know,'' " 



The North American Slime-Moulds. By Thomas H. Macbkide, 

 A.M., Ph.D. New York : The Macmillan Company. 



To many, if not to most, readers the above title will denote a 

 purely botanical book foreign to our scope and pages. But much 

 may be said, and has been said, as to the zoological affinities of 

 the Myxomycetes, or Slime-Moulds, which " include certain very 



