Scientific Reviews. 437 
it may assist in developing our knowledge of the fossil kingdom, 
and tracing the progress of creation, how much it may tend to give 
certainty to our knowledge of structure, and assist in marking the 
relations of the animal kingdom, or of what use it may be in an 
economical point of view,—still we cannot help feeling that, with 
so little diversity of habits and structure, the pursuit of prey or 
escape from the destroyer, constituting the only occupation of their 
life—determining the choice of their abodes—the principal object 
of their variety of form—their continual want, that which alone, 
excepting in the season of love, agitates and carries them through 
their monotonous existence—coupled with the impossibility of ever 
studying the habits of the greater number of species, ichthyology will 
never present the same beautiful traits of character—the same mag- 
nificent features of habit and passion—as the study of birds er quad- 
rupeds. Man loves to dwell with the nestling songster of the grove— 
to recal to his memory the stormy petrel—the wandering albatross, 
or the bird of the night—to skim the desert with the ostrich or emu 
—or to soar in imagination with the condor, above the snow-clad 
mountains of the New World. And in quadrupeds, whose habits 
are still more various—where there is so close an approximatien to 
the intellect of man, so much ingenuity shown in the construction 
of abodes, in the pursuit of prey, or in avoiding an enemy—where 
the features of their geographical distribution are so striking— 
where the forms are oftentimes so magnificent, or approach so nearly 
to the human,—there can but be a still deeper and more rapturous 
interest connected with their study, which, by leading to a culti- 
vated and intellectual veneration of the universal Creator, consti- 
tutes in itself one of the greatest advantages of a knowledge of the 
natural sciences. 
The Botanical Miscellany. By Wiuu1am Jackson Hooker, 
LL.D. F.R.A. & 1.8. &e. Vol. I. (Part III. unpublished.) 
Murray. Lendon. 1830. : 
Tus is one of the first periodical works devoted to botany, 
which has appeared since the publication of “‘ Konig and Sim’s 
Annals.” Its object is to include figures and descriptions of such 
plants as recommend themselves by their novelty, rarity, or his- 
tory, or by the uses to which they are applied in the arts, in me- 
dicine, and in domestic economy, together with occasional botanical 
notices and information. 
It would be as impossible for us to notice the various interesting 
communications and descriptions, which have appeared in the first 
volume, as to lay the treasures of the deep at our readers feet. 
Flora has been denominated the fair, and this is one of her fairest 
offsprings : its beauty must therefore be exceeding. The vast mass 
of materials which have been accumulating on the hands of one of 
