Scientific Reviens. 49 
cumstances, it appears surprising that there do not more frequently 
issue from the press such volumes as the Journal of a Naturalist, 
a collection of remarks on the natural history of the environs of a 
little village in the West of England; but, excepting in the in- 
stances of White’s Natural History of Selborne, Murray’s Experi- 
mental Researches in Natural History, and a few other miscellanies 
of that cast, it has been rather the custom to enter the columns of 
a periodical under the shelter of an anonymous contribution, than 
to risk the character of a sublunary immortality by the production 
of a responsible volume. It is with satisfaction, however, that we 
observe, in a speedy appearance of a second edition of the little 
volume before us, the sanction which a tasteful public has decreed 
to this method of registering data, which shall in future be appli- 
cable to the inductions of more talented men; and we enjoin our 
friends in the country to be diligent with their note-books, whether 
it be for their own use or for ours, recollecting that however simple 
the ordinary observations which daily occur may appear, this is the 
stuff of which such interesting and valuable books as the Journal 
of a Naturalist are altogether composed. 
Little more than a general notice and recommendation can be 
given of a volume, whose contents are all fragments of thoughts 
and unconnected notes. We must, at least on this occasion, confine 
ourselves to the selection of some new species, which the author 
suggests as additions to our British Fauna. 
The plates, accordant with the text, contain many little things 
which would not be found elsewhere ; for instance, “‘a grass, from 
Malvern Hills,” which appears to be the festuca duriuscula, with 
peculiar characters, owing to the constant browsing of cattle, sec- 
tions of wood, exhibiting their microscopic structure, nightingales’ 
eggs, snakes’ eggs, &c. 
Plate IV. Fig. 4. represents a Spheria (faginea?) found upon 
the decayed woed of the beech tree in the earlier part of the spring, 
which < does not accord well with the Sp. faginea of Lamark.” “ it 
appears on the surface of the tree in little nodules, which, gradually 
uniting and increasing, form a regular black crust. Upon exami- 
nation we find, that little round bodies have forced a passage 
through the outer bark, and enlarged into small round tubes, which 
ultimately become the conductors of the seminal dust, discharged 
from round, beaked seed vessels, imbedded beneath upon the inner 
bark,” (p. 125.) The author has not met with any notice of this 
plant ; but conjectures that “‘ Sp. granulosa of Sowerby, and Sp. 
tentaculata of Batsch, may be it in a young stage of growth.” 
An agaric, in general appearance like the Agaricus varius, cccu- 
pies Plate VII. It is “rare, local,’ and, the author believes, 
*““ unnoticed ; trailing its long roots in October among the small de- 
cayed fragments of some old hedge, elegant in itself, but more re- 
markable from the coloured fluid it contains, which upon being 
wounded it emits, not as a milky fluid, but like an orange-coloured, 
tasteless, spirituous extract, long retaining its colour upon paper, 
VOL. I. 
