72 
Bibliographical Notices. 
Waterton, Darwin and Gosse have earned laurels. The chief object 
of this class of works is to please while they instruct, to enliven as 
well as to enlighten, to awaken as well as to cherish a love for 
natural history. Along with Kirby and Spence, and in the same list 
with Alexander Wilson the American ornithologist, the authors spe- 
cified above and the writer at the head of this article may he placed. 
A popular writer is too often deemed by the mere scientific man, 
not profound, and there may he at times some truth in it ; Mr. Bro- 
derip however is not superficially acquainted with some of the chapters 
of the book of nature. He is well knoMm as a scientific conchologist, 
whose very fine collection of shells, many of them originally described 
by himself, were acquired by Parliament for the nation and deposited 
in the British Museum. His writings and compilations in the C)’’- 
clopsedia of the Useful Knowledge Society have done much to diffuse 
a taste for natural history, and in the work before us, leaving for a 
time strict science, he delights us with many pleasing chapters on 
birds and beasts. 
There are two excellent chapters on our resident and migratory 
singing-birds, right pleasant reading at this time of year, from the 
associations they call up of spring and summer. He discourses 
pleasantly on owls, a grave subject ; and from chattering, gay- 
coloured parrots and parrakeets turns to gobbling turkeys or bub- 
bly jocks, one of which, the ocellated turkey {Meleagris ocellatus), 
he strongly urges some patriotic individual to introduce to this 
country. The Earl of Derby has one specimen in his noble aviary 
and menagerie at Knowsley, but we fear that the bird is a widow, and 
likely long to continue so : it is strange that his lordship has been 
hitherto unsuccessful in finding a mate for this bird. From swans, 
wild and tame, which 
“ on sweet St. Mary’s Lake,” 
and on other lakes and streams as well, 
“ float double, swan and shadow,” 
our author most undesignedly passes to a chapter of advice to anglers, 
— a fertile theme, unexhausted and inexhaustible, as witness the 
writings of Izaak Walton, Sir Humphry Davy — how Walton would 
have loved the chemist, and the sculptor Sir Francis Chantrey, even 
although he wrote no ‘Salmonia’! — of Mr. Yarrell, of Scrope, of 
John Wilson (the renowned Christopher North), of Jesse, cum multis 
aliis — “ Good luck to your fishing there seems to be some free- 
masonry in the thing itself, and there is certainly something most 
attractive in the subject. 
Whether the spring-filled song on the bonny month of May in 
page 172, immediately after the “ Word to Anglers,” be the buoyant 
sjiirits that flow from the subject just touched upon, we know not, 
but the five stanzas come in most opportunely and read most j^lea- 
santly. We have not got half through the book, and must leave dogs 
and cats, (surely Mr. Broderip, like Jeremy Bentham, is a bachelor,) 
apes and monkeys, and the grave, gigantic and graphically described 
elephants, for another notice ; with three chapters on Dragons, Mr. 
