70 
POPULAR SCIENCE RETIEW. 
can see in the causes which have produced the scenery of Wales nothing 
hut denudation, as those who know his various papers in the Geological 
Magazine might have anticipated. For ourselves, we believe very fully in 
the medio tutissimus ibis principle, and if Mr. Mackintosh would just assume 
what our Gallic neighbours call the juste milieu , we believe he would soon 
have more disciples than he can reckon on at present, and would do more 
service to physical geology. We have no desire in the world to underrate 
the very great influence of denudation in modifying the physical contour of 
a country, but to ascribe the scenery of England and Wales to denudation 
alone is really carrying on the matter too far. There are, we think, very sound 
geological reasons for believing that before denudation could have affected 
the scenery in any but the most trifling manner, that scenery was even 
grander than it is to-day. If Mr. Mackintosh merely means to tell us that 
denudation has done a great deal, he is but repeating a well-known 
geological truism. If he intends to prove that it has done all — and we 
think he does — he is overstepping the limits of legitimate reasoning. His 
book is a very interesting one, both to general readers and geologists, and it 
is illustrated by some very pretty sketches from the author’s pencil. But 
for all this, we cannot help regarding it as a peg on which the author has 
found it convenient and useful to hang out to air those theories of his which 
have from time to time been so severely handled in the magazine in which 
they first appeared. 
A NATURALIST’S RAMBLES.* 
H AVING been in the habit, while walking through the country lanes with 
his children, of pointing out to them the most striking facts in rural 
natural history, the Rev. W. Houghton deemed that it would be useful to 
jot down on paper his conversations with his 11 little ones.” We think he 
was right, and we believe that his efforts will do much service in improving 
the minds of children, in cultivating an early taste for scientific study, and 
in developing original observations in young folk. There is, of course, 
nothing in this little volume of Mr. Houghton’s which has not appeared in 
a thousand forms in other treatises of a similar character; but the facts are 
woven together in a novel and natural manner, just as they might be by an 
intelligent father who sought to instil a few elementary scientific fact3 into 
the minds of his children. Truthful and simple, garnished here and there 
with a telling anecdote, full of detail and yet put in such a way that the 
little power of concentration which a child possesses is certain to be exercised, 
the author’s dialogues during his rambles may be read to all young people 
with interest and profit. They are devoid of that painful tendency to hyper- 
moralisation which is such a bore to the young, and which makes the old 
look back on their young days, when books of the “ moralising school ” 
existed de trop , somewhat as we look back on the jam which was used to 
conceal that dreadful u powder” of our childhood. Mr. Houghton’s book is 
free from these defects, and yet is well calculated to inspire the readers 
* u Country Walks of a Naturalist with his Children.” By the Rev. W. 
Houghton, M.A., F.L.S. London : Groombridge, 1809. 
