REVIEWS. 
55 
practical experience, for whose help it is designed, it will be a boon. En¬ 
thusiasm of suitable amount, and such postulates, are, of course, taken for 
granted; his one longing is to collect Lepidoptera in all stages, and to 
know where, when, and how to obtain them. Mr. Shield offers to be his 
guide and tutor, and it is no presumption in him to offer it, for he is well 
up to his work. If his friend, “ the tyro,” be especially ravished with the 
charms of the micro-lepidoptera, all the better for him, and all the more 
useful will the “ hints” be, as an overwhelming proportion of the book is 
devoted to these, for whom are reserved all expressions of tender regard. 
From this volume alone it would be easy to predicate what is the author’s 
amiable monomania. Perhaps the general utility of the book suffers a 
little; but we respect such devotion, and forbear complaint. To make 
popular reading for the profanum vulgus out of a book whose pages fre¬ 
quently flow on in long succession of notices that in such and such places 
such and such insects are found, may be taken, occur, &c., the whole voca¬ 
bulary of discovery and capture being cruelly overworked—to weave this 
into popular reading, we say, would be well nigh impossible. Mr. Shield 
has attempted it; but not very successfully. Lengthy, rhapsodical, occa¬ 
sionally sentimental, addresses to the country and the seasons (suggested, it 
may be pleaded, not unnaturally, by the division according to the months, 
which has been adopted to make the work a compendious 11 Calendar of 
Operations throughout the Year”), wearisomely minute directions for going 
hither and thither, when some definite goal has to be reached, which even 
“ a tyro” could attain to by asking the way—many of these passages might 
be noted by a future editor as “ uncis inclusa ,” without injury to the de¬ 
sign or its execution. There is also in both these volumes a good deal of 
8 or 10-footed prose, interspersed with several fragments of decent versi¬ 
fication, and here and there a splendid exception of true poetry. To the 
second of these classes may be referred a passage, now terribly hackneyed, 
for which, were not the obvious pun which it contains likely to prove too 
strong a temptation for the entomologist of this generation at least to 
forego, we should pray that it might be allowed to retire from public life on 
a good service pension; we mean, of course, the lines about our “ Friend 
the Weaver.” We may be allowed, in passing, to correct two misquota¬ 
tions, one in each work. In page 39 of the “ Practical Hints”— u Thus 
justice, while she works at crimes.” For “ works,” read “ winks.” It is 
a famous quotation from Hudibras, which we are the more bound to set 
right, as we fear that a misprint in our number of October, 1854, may 
have misled the author. Mr. Douglas, who seems so fond of poetry, old 
and new, and whose just appreciation of glorious old Spenser particularly 
H 
