62 
REVIEWS. 
margins, and ample space allowed for both letter-press and plates. There 
is something showy about it, calculated to render it, as it was doubtless 
intended to be, in a certain way popular. It would look very well on a 
drawing-room table, and would be pronounced “ a very pretty book.” The 
author is well known for his devotedness to natural history in various 
branches, in connection with some of which he has put out other very 
pretty and popular books; but he confesses in the preface to the book 
now before us, that, “ if there be one branch of natural history which is 
to me more captivatingly interesting than another, it is entomology,” and 
in this we are at one with him. It is, also, very gratifying to find that he 
is a naturalist on right principles, those which lead us to seek and find 
God in every work which he has made, and to love them for his sake, and 
study them for the better showing forth his wisdom and glory ; while, at 
the same time, he acknowledges that, for one in his position, and bearing 
the sacred office of 11 a Priest in the Church of God,” these pursuits ought 
to be followed merely as a relaxation from more arduous duties. “I trust, 
indeed,” he writes in the preface, “that I have not forgotten, do not forget, 
and never shall forget, that I have high and holy duties to perform, to 
which all else must be subordinate and give way. Knowing, however, 
that these studies are innocent in themselves; that they add to the amount 
of human happiness; and that, if used as they always should be, they 
infallibly lead from the works of nature up to the God of nature, in feelings 
of the holiest adoration, and most humble worship ; I encourage others to 
follow them, so far as it may be right for them to do so.” 
The book itself is addressed altogether ad populum , and aims at 
exciting an interest in the minds of the previously careless or ignorant, 
and promoting a desire to collect specimens rather than at giving them 
instruction in the science of the pursuit, still less increasing the knowledge 
of the scientific entomologist. Accordingly, there is no admission granted 
to anything that could be called a dry detail, no sesquipedalian terms are 
found there, no nice criticisms on the various characteristics of families and 
genera, no balancing of authorities in nomenclature, no questions of scien¬ 
tific precedence or etiquette interfere with the light-hearted good humour 
of the book; the author’s object is to attract and captivate the uninformed, 
as it were to matriculate freshmen into the entomological university; and 
he knows very well that freshmen do not expect to be confounded with the 
profound mysteries which make even solemn professors look grave. So he 
leads them gaily along from butterfly to butterfly, with something of the 
sprightly nonchalance of Harold Skimpole, and, it must be feared, nearly as 
ready to be diverted from his object—but more of this hereafter. If a 
