Abstract
WE regret to be obliged to find fault with the work of a naturalist, but duty to our readers compels us to say that this book should never have been published. There is perhaps no part of the world which is at once so remote and inhabited by such interesting savage tribes, with the main features of whose scenery and natural productions the public is so well informed as that which forms the subject of this book. It is therefore surprising that a gentleman who has had the opportunity of studying the natural history of this region at his leisure, should have thought himself justified in printing a volume of 500 pages of his rough journal, nine-tenths of which are occupied with a bald record of the usual monotonous incidents of sea and shore excursions, and with repetitions of facts already given us by Darwin, Hooker, and a host of other less eminent writers. There are, of course, some interesting facts and some original observations in this volume, but they are so thinly scattered amid a mass of details of weather and personal incidents, with records of the gathering of every common plant and the capture of every common as well as uncommon bird or insect, as to be not worth the search after. The book too is got up with an utter disregard of the reader's convenience. The author journalises his whole voyage, and at least one third of the volume treats of other parts of the world than those indicated by the title, yet the heading throughout is “Strait of Magellan,” even when Rio Janeiro, Valparaiso, or the Azores are bein^ described. Neither is there any indication of years or months, except when a change occurs; and if we find that something was captured on the “14th,”we have to go back or forward many pages to discover whether we are in May or December. The plates too are wholly without references to the letterpress; and we find a curious plant (Philesia buxifolia) described at page 173, and figured at page 321, with no reference from description to figure or from figure to description. The illustrations seem thrown in at random, anything the author collected being apparently deemed worthy of a plate. On no other principle can we explain the plate devoted to an indifferent figure of the cranium of so common an animal as the puma; and another to the furcula of a condor, the picking-up of which is recorded at page 113, and figured full size, à propos of nothing, at page 303.
Notes on the Natural History of the Strait of Magellan and West Coast of Patagonia, made during the Voyage of H.M.S. “Nassau,” in the years 1866–1869.
By Robert O. Cunningham, &c., Naturalist to the Expedition. (Edinburgh: Edmonston and Douglas.)
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Notes on the Natural History of the Strait of Magellan and West Coast of Patagonia, made during the Voyage of H.M.S. “Nassau,” in the years 1866–1869 . Nature 3, 484 (1871). https://doi.org/10.1038/003484a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/003484a0