14 
MA JURE NOTES. 
repented. We had some ornithological talk, though far too 
little, as the room where we sat was nearly filled with vacant 
travellers, who sometimes chattered nonsense and sometimes 
gazed in stupid amazement.” 
The foregoing particulars I have taken the liberty to extract 
from some letters lent me some }'ears ago by one of the Fother- 
gill famil}', with which I am connected by the marriage of 
Charles Fothergill with my mother’s sister. 
Bewdck’s Birds have never been surpassed, if equalled, in 
truth of form and feather, and the tail-pieces are full of quiet 
humour and keen relish for rural things. They often “ point a 
moral,” and are never chargeable with anything worse than 
•occasional instances of the coarseness of the last century. 
Bewick’s intense enjoyment of his skill in depicting the minute 
in Nature sometimes made him forget that some things neces- 
sary, and therefore orderly and innocent, may be unseemly for 
public exhibition. Some of the truths of Nature are not to be 
spoken at all times, and Bewick’s inimitable skill in telling them 
does not save some of his cuts from obliteration ; but his morals 
are always sound. 
Theodore Compton. 
A BOOK FOR NATURE LOVERS. 
Forty Years in a Moorland Parish : Reminiscences .nnfl Researches in Danby 
in Cleveland, by the Rev. J. C. .\tkinson, D.C.L., incumbent of the parish. 
(London: Macmillan. Ss. 6d. net.) 
From time to time the thought must have occurred to many. What sort of a 
•book would Gilbert White have written had he lived a hundred years later? 
Such a view implies no depreciation of the classical Natural History of Selhornc, 
but it is certain that in many respects our knowledge is greatly in advance of his, 
and indeed it would be strange if such were not the case. 
The qualifications for such a task would, however, be in no way confined to 
the mere increase of knowledge. “ Knowledge,” indeed, has grown “ from more 
do more,” but we cannot deal rightly with a history involving constant reference 
to the past unless as a complement “ more of reverence in us dwell.” This 
reminder is indeed probably less necessary in this last decade of the century than 
it was some forty years since. The importance of folk-lore and tradition is now 
recognised, and the study of the former takes rank with the sciences, and it is 
•certain that no one could hope to occupy the place left vacant by Gilbert White 
who had not even more than his toleration (which, to say truth, is somewhat 
apologetically manifested in .Selhorne) for the superstitions of bygone ages. 
The mantle of White, as it seems to us, has kallen upon the genial recorder of 
the observations of Forty Years in a Moorland Parish, and with it a double 
portion of his spirit. Dr. Atkinson has given us in this delightful book a com- 
prehensive record of his experience of a life-time passed in the Yorkshire dales : 
his Cleveland Glossary took rank as a standard authority on its publication in 
1868. In the present volume he gives us a picture, minute in its details and 
graphic in its comprehensiveness, of the men and manners past and present, of 
the early history and recent developments, of the folk-lore, traditions and customs, 
and of the history and natural history of the parish which has been fortunate in 
possessing him as its incumbent for forty years. The casual wanderer, who can 
tind in a trip of some few weeks or months materials for a record of his travels, 
