REVIEWS. 
61 
of two valued friends, themselves zealous naturalists, as his literary execu¬ 
tors. But of them, alsa, one was called away by death before their office 
was at last fulfilled. From the survivor, the amiable author of “ Zoology 
for Schools,” &c., we have an account of the circumstances under which 
their editorial duty was undertaken, and the manner in which it has been 
executed. 
Mr. Thompson’s papers were found arranged, as might, indeed, have 
been anticipated, with the most perfect method ; but they were the mere 
materials of the future work—notes made at various times, letters, or ex¬ 
tracts from such, references to his journal, or to published books :— 
u The notes were written on paper of the most miscellaneous description, and 
occasionally on slips so small that six or eight lines were crowded into a slip not 
exceeding an inch in breath. . . . How was the information embodied in these 
notes to be written out ? It was desirable to use, as far as possible, the very words 
that Mr. Thompson had employed. The book should be his composition, not ours. 
Yet, to give the world the hurried jottings of the moment, and the unrevised 
memoranda of successive years, could not be thought of.” 
This extract may indicate some of the difficulties which the editors had 
to deal with, and which, guided by a sound discretion and affectionate 
remembrance, and justified by directions in his own handwriting on this 
subject, they have surmounted in a manner which deserves our grateful 
acknowledgment, anxious as we have felt that those scientific fruits of 
years, the existence of which we knew, should not be lost through the 
untimely stroke that had withered the hand that wrought them. 
We do not look to find in this posthumous volume the matured results, 
the chastened yet glowing style, that marked the previous volumes, touched 
and retouched by the author’s hand. Still, many a detached passage, a 
page standing out here and there, leads us to sigh over the loss of yet 
other volumes, that should have arrested and enchained us, nothing loth, 
as the “ Birds” have done for many an hour before. It is, however, for 
the matter, more than the form, that we accept, with mingled gratification 
and regret, this bequest of a name so dearly cherished. 
To the materials collected by Mr. Thompson, and put into form and con¬ 
tinuous connection by his editors, a brief memoir is prefixed of the author’s 
life—a life uneventful indeed, but vivified by systematic energy and pur¬ 
pose of will, and endeared by the hearty friendship of many noble natures 
and names engraven on the tablets of fame—a life but little prolonged in 
duration, worn out, in fact, before his work finished had satisfied his own 
aspirings. A portrait, reduced from that of the author in Mr. Ransome’s 
Ipswich series, recalls him to our mind’s eye, as we have often seen him in 
the body, in those morning hours sacred to study or scientific conference, 
