REVIEWS. 
45 
dence to recommend them to consideration. Particularly instructive are 
the remarks on the effects of “ isolation” on the character of insects, for the 
study of which, the group of islands, of which Madeira is the principal, 
affords so favourable a field, by their geographical position and physical 
configuration, and Mr. Wollaston’s indefatigable researches such rich ma¬ 
terials. 
A Natural History of the Animal Kingdom, being a Systematic and 
Popular Description of the Habits, Structure, and Classification of Ani¬ 
mals, from the lowest to the highest forms, arranged according to their 
organization. By W. S. Dallas, F.L.S. One Yol. 8vo. Houlston 
and Stoneman, 65, Paternoster Row; W. S. Qrr and Co., Amen 
Corner: London, 1856. 
This volume, as is explicitly stated in the preface, is a portion of the second 
and third volumes of Organic Nature in the Circle of the Sciences, 
reprinted here, in a separate and complete form. No pretensions are made 
on this behalf to originality; but the compiler has made good use of works 
of standard character, his obligations to which are distinctly acknow¬ 
ledged, and has exhibited the results, so far as they can be accepted as 
mature, of recent investigations, in advancing the classification of the lower 
tribes of animals especially; and this in a manner which contrasts to no 
small advantage with some contemporary works of more original research 
and higher scientific pretension. As Mr. Dallas has so emphatically 
acknowledged his obligations to u the excellent Zoologische Briefe of Pro¬ 
fessor Vogt,” it is fair to remark that, he has transferred from those pages 
none of the sciolism of flippant infidelity which renders the Zoological 
Letters, with all their merits of diligent compilation and lucid arrange¬ 
ment, unfit to be placed in the hands of the young in particular. The 
figures of Mr. Dallas’s book, copies mostly from familiar stereotyped 
patterns, are better executed, in general, than those Vogt has given. 
When we say that two-thirds of the volume are devoted to the 
Vertebrata, it will be evident that many of the lower forms must be dismissed 
with a flying pen. We should have doubted whether such a pro¬ 
portion represents the actual division of study aiid interest between the 
several branches of the animal kingdom. It is to be remembered, how¬ 
ever, that the work was framed as a portion only of a popular cyclopaedia? 
and is to be judged as a bookselling speculation ; not intending by the term 
any slight towards the judgment of a class, w r ith some of whom have 
originated schemes at once bold and wise, which have fructified to the benefit 
ot authors and the reading public, even more than to the originators, when 
