58 
LOCAL OCCURRENCES IN NATURAL HISTORY, 
to extend the narrow limits within which he lay immured in solemn dignity. 
Such an author is like a lake ihiprisoned within frowning rocks of hideous aspect, 
far from the hum of men, retaining indeed the pure element as distilled by the 
clouds down the asperities of the slippery ravine; but splashing its sullen and 
useless waters upon the barren stones, unseen in its shadowy concavity but by 
the momentary wanderer on the mountains, undrank even by the nomadic gipsy 
or sauntering shepherd—and wreathed for months within the invisible folds of a 
monotonous fog. But should art or accident pierce the barrier that held the 
waters in their silent unfrequented hold, or should continual percolation at length 
work a passage for the immured fountain, at once graceful, active, and useful, its 
sprightly intonations resound through the glens, as amid Birchen bowers and 
Hazel groves it hastens into the level country, flocks drink and rejoice in its cooling 
influence;—the herds wade and rest among its Sedges and Lilies,—the roar of 
the water-wheel and wier tells of its subjection to the husbandmen of the vales,— 
and now with expansive breast and brimful stream, the boat and barge navigate 
its curls and reaches, and the hum of commerce and the bustle of business mur¬ 
mur along its banks, till, as the tidal wave mounts in majesty upon its surface, 
a forest of masts and brilliant waving pennons proclaim its union with the ocean, 
and its vast importance to the interests of mankind in general, as a grand and 
imposing artery of communication with the interior country. So, comparing 
physical with moral effects, we may not unaptly estimate the results of the 
labours of a popular writer, in comparison with those of a scientific but 
abstruse one. 
Let me not for a moment be supposed to undervalue the labours of the zealous 
cultivator of scientific knowledge, or to insinuate that the labours of the systematic 
adept must not always occupy a higher rank in literature than those of the 
paraphrist or elucidator only; I do not deny it, but I think the original observer 
may in general prove more eminently useful to his compeers by clothing his 
observations in familiar language, rather than by limiting the extent of his arena 
to the narrow circle of his own scientific 44 order,” by the too exclusive use of 
technicalities and formulae. This suggestion appears to me to be fully fiorne out 
by the observations of Mr. Swainson in his Treatise on the Geography and 
Classification of Animals ; for while the fabrication of the new polyglot insect 
groups and repulsively-intricate system ofFABRicius, are said to have 44 retarded” 
the progress of entomological science,* Gilbert White’s plain but interesting 
records are justly lauded and recommended to every lover of Nature, as it is 
asserted that 44 some of the most important truths of ornithological science are 
mainly supported by the simple and apparently trivial facts detailed in his 
interesting book.”f 
* Swainson’s Geoy. and Class, of Animals, in Lardner’s Cab. Cyclop p. 190. + Ibid., p. 310. 
