70 
POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
a work which deserves to be placed along with Sir R. Kane’s “ Industrial 
Resources of Ireland” — a book which got its author a knighthood, and 
made his name familiar to everyone who was interested in such important 
questions. There is not a chapter of this work in which the reader will not 
find abundance of matter to interest him. Let us take at random a single 
passage, which will give the nature of the work : — “ Margraf found that an 
unsightly weed, growing wild on the shores of the Mediterranean, contained 
a small quantity of sugar and a large proportion of soda. By transplanting 
and careful culture, a large part of the soda was eliminated, and potash sub- 
stituted in its place, and the quantity of sugar considerably increased. The 
weed was transformed into the sugar-beet, and an industry established which 
has proved to be of great value to the European countries where the beet- 
root sugar is made.” On every other mode of using up waste matters, 
and obtaining from them useful material, this book is abundantly fertile. 
THE NATURALIST IN NICARAGUA.* 
A BOOK that would have been excessively charming had it been thoroughly 
illustrated, and which is full of interest even as it is. We trust, 
however, that it may soon reach a second edition, and that when it does the 
author will scatter through his text a number of engravings taken frdm 
photographs. There is no book with which we can compare it, unless it be 
that admirable treatise by Mr. Bates, which we noticed about ten years ago, 
“ The Naturalist on the Amazons.” It is something of the same kind, but 
by no means the equal of Bates’s volumes. And, curiously enough, it is 
dedicated to Mr. Bates, so that we may suppose the author took him as his 
type. It of course does contain illustrations — though not enough — and 
some of them, especially those of the “ Hornet and the Mimetic Bug,” 
“The Leaf Insect,” and “Moss Insect,” are greatly to be commended. 
The book extends over nearly 400 pages, and is brimful of interesting 
descriptions of a most instructive country, with useful records of the 
industry of the natives, of their habits, and of the antiquities and natural 
history, botanical and zoological, of the much-varied land which the 
author has successfully explored. Mr. Belt has a very charming style, and 
the ease and fluency with which he describes his various excursions add 
considerably to the charm of the work. All through he appears to be 
extremely severe upon the discovering Spaniards ,* indeed, in some passages, 
he indulges in the heaviest diatribes against them. And certainly there is 
much to justify this, as the reader of his book will satisfactorily see for him- 
self. There is, however, one point which we ourselves must call attention 
to ere we close our notice of this interesting and instructive volume, and 
that refers to those marvellous instances of mimicry in which certain insects 
* “The Naturalist in Nicaragua 5 a Narrative of a Residence at the 
Gold-mines of Ohontales, Journeys in the Savannahs and Forests, with 
Observations on Animals and Plants in reference to the Theory of Evolu- 
tions of Living Forms.” By Thomas Belt, E.G.S. London: John Murray, 
1874. 
