SHORT NOTICES OF BOOKS. 
15 
that this work may give to others some of the pleasure that Bewick’s British 
Birds gave to her, and that it may lead them to “consider the fowls of the air 
as callable of affording delight in other ways besides filling a game-bag, or 
adorning a hat.” 
O. V. Ai'LIN. 
SHORT NOTICES OF BOOKS. 
Lift in Ponds and Streams, by \V. Fumeaux ; 8vo, pp. xix., 406, 8 coloured 
plates, 3 1 1 cuts. Longmans, 12s. 6d. We are beginning to look on a new volume 
of Messrs. Longmans’ “ Out-of-Door Library ”asa welcome accompaniment of the 
present-giving season ; and we have little <loubt that many youthful Sellxirnians 
have reason so to regard it. In natural history books, as in others, the rising 
generation nowadays is in some danger of being spoilt by the abundance of 
good things ; one wonders whether they get more enjoyment from them than 
the nature-loving boys of forty years back used to derive from Wood’s Common 
Objects of the Country and others of the same series, which then represented the 
highwater mark of cheap and good natural history books. Certainly they ought 
to do .so, for in a volume like that now before us they have a perfect storehouse 
of information, popular and scientific, admirably illustrated, and clearly written 
by one who is well versed in bis subject and knows how to communicate his 
knowledge. 
An excellent introduction deals with the collector’s work in ponds and streams, 
including minute fonns of life, in connection with which is a useful disquisition 
on the microscope ; then we come to “ the pond-hunter’s museum,” and how to 
preserve the objects to be placed in it ; then a chapter on aquaria and their 
management, with figures of the plants to be grown therein, which would be better 
if drawn to one scale, or if some indication of reriuction were given — the frond 
of a duckweed, for e.xample, appears to be almost as broad as the flower of 
the yellow water-lily, and, which is odd, the lesser water-plantain is at least 
twice as big as the greater I Then we begin with the lower forms of pond life, 
working our way up for the amceba and the hydra to leeches and molluscs, 
through crayfishes and freshwater shrimps, waterboatmen and dragonflies, cad- 
dises and water-beetles, till we arnve at fishes (a lew), and wind up with the 
amphibious frogs, toads, and newts. This is a thoroughly good book, and the 
young folk who get it will find it permanently useful. 
We hear a great deal nowadays about ojien spaces, but a century ago Lon- 
doneis posses.>ea a great many more of them than they do at present, although 
some weie only “open” (in another seme of the word) to those who paid a lee 
for entering. Mr. W arwick Wroth has compiled a very interesting volume on 
'Ihe London Pleasure Gardens of the Eighteenth Century, which Messrs. Mac- 
millan have produced in — it possible — a style more excellent than usual. The 
facsimile reproductions of old cuts and coloured plates, with portraits, maps, and 
the like— amounting in all to sixty-two in number — leave nothing to t>e oesired, 
and add very greatly to the value of .Mr. Wroth’s extremely lull and careiully- 
written accounts. An excellent plan shows the distribution of the gardens ; 
it IS remarkable how many 01 these clusteied along what is now the singularly 
dreary s-.uth side of the livcr, from Bermondsey Spa — commemorated in .Spa Road 
— to Vauxhall, perhaps the most celebrated and the la.st to disappear; many will 
be surprised to learn that \ auxhall Gardens were nut clo.sed until the middle 
of 1859. 
Til s book takes rank as a definite contribution to the history of London. It is 
as far removed as possible from the cheap compilations from well-known and 
easily accessible books which we too frequently meet with. Mr. Wroth has ran- 
sacked iliebiitish Museum anvl Guildhall Libraries, has searched newspapers and 
magazines, and has Conipre.-scd into his 350 pages an amount of information 
which cannot lail to delight the topogiapher, the biographer, and the student of 
