Analyses of Books. 
1883.] 
493 
tunately not printed in full. The Botanical and Entomological 
Sections, we are sorry to find, have not been very acftive. 
The volume closes with a continuation of the “ Flora of the 
Bristol Coal Field,” edited by Mr. James Walter White. 
Appendix to Contributions to Natural History, and Papers on 
other Subjects. By Tames Simson. New York : James 
Miller. 
To us, as a naturalist, this little work is disappointing. The 
“ Contributions ” themselves contain only 49 pages of matter 
dealing with Natural History, whilst 122 pages— or nearly three- 
fourths of the whole — are devoted to Romanism, John Stuart 
Mill, the social emancipation of the Gipsies, the question “ Was 
John Bunyan a Gipsy ?” and the Duke of Argyll on the preserva- 
tion of the Jews. 
The Appendix now before us consists of four essays : — 
I. John Bunyan and the Gipsies. 
II. Frank Buckland and White of Selborne. 
III. Frank Buckland on the Viper. And— 
IV. On the Endowment of Research. 
The first of these papers lies distinctly outside of our juris- 
diction. Had John Bunyan been a man of Science, or an oppo- 
nent and enemy of Science, his nationality might have been 
legitimately here discussed. As he did not come in contaCt with 
Science at all, we must simply leave the question to be dealt 
with by the literary organs. 
The second essay is much more to the purpose. Like Prof. 
Browne, Goode, and Miss Hopley, Mr. Simson maintains, inop- 
position to the late Frank Buckland and others, that young vipers 
and possibly other serpents, when in danger, take refuge down 
the throat of their mother. Though we have devoted much time 
to the observation of vipers, both in their native haunts and in 
captivity, we had never the good fortune to witness this swal- 
lowing process. Still, from the evidence which has been brought 
forward, we consider it must be received as an established faCL 
Mr. Simson passes on to notice Buckland’s edition of White’s 
“ Selborne,” a performance which, the “ Examiner ” remarks, 
“ has already succumbed under its own presumptuous ineffi- 
ciency.” Mr. Simson shows that Buckland took most unpardon- 
able liberties with the author’s text. Of White’s notes twenty- 
four are suppressed, twenty-four more used as notes but with 
nothing to distinguish them from Buckland's own, and thirteen 
are incorporated with the text. 
