132 
NATURE NOTES. 
shilling, and we can promise both author and publisher that at 
such a price the sale would be enormous. 
Like those who listened to the Bellman, Sir John Lubbock’s 
readers are presumably “ all of them fond of quotations.” No 
writer has so admirable a knack of bringing together a number 
of select passages from the most diverse writers in widely differ- 
ing styles. This was manifest in the earlier work already re- 
ferred to, and here it is, if anything, more remarkable. Seneca, 
Keble, Victor Hugo, W. R. Greg, W'^ordsworth, Kingsley, 
King Alfred, Cicero, Aristotle, Thoreau, Spenser, Hamerton, 
Jefferies, Humboldt, Darwin, Wallace, Belt, Patrin, Gray, 
Colvin, Bernardin de St. Pierre, Emerson, Shelley, the Song of 
Solomon, William Howitt — ^these, with many others incidentally 
referred to, are cited in the introductory chapter alone, and so 
dexterously are they dovetailed one into the other that the result 
is not that of a mere patchwork, but of a tapestr}- in which the 
various coloured — a word which we are sorry to see Sir John 
spells “ colored — threads blend into a harmonious whole. The 
book is admirably illustrated, as the accompanying example 
will show. 
The fact that it is the busiest men who can always find time 
for more work has become an axiom, and in no one surely is this 
better exemplified than in the case of our new President, who 
combines various avocations, any one of which would suffice to 
keep a busy man employed, and yet finds time to devote to a wide 
range of natural history observations and to indulge in a course 
of reading of the extent of which a volume such as this gives 
some indication. How is it done ? We remember in our youth 
having had held up to our admiration the example of a man 
who wrote “ a large book ” during the quarters of an hour 
which his wife kept him waiting for his dinner. Even in those 
early days we were somewhat sceptical as to the accuracy oi 
this narrative ; but it can only be by such rigorous economy 
of fragments of time that Sir John Lubbock can carry out his 
various enterprises. In this volume alone we have chapters on 
animal and vegetable life, on the woods and fields,-the mountains 
and rivers, the sea and sky, all of them evidencing an amount 
of well-digested reading and personal observation at home and 
abroad which makes it impossible not to envy the possessor of a 
mind so comprehensive and appreciative. Certainl}' this hand- 
some book will be a delightful out-of-doors companion wher- 
ever we may direct our steps this summer ; and if we could put 
it in our pocket without materially adding to our encumbrances 
it would be even more widely used than it is certain to be in its 
present form. 
