Abstract
JUDGING by the continuous stream of popular “Natural Histories,” the demand for such books must be great. Messrs. Cassell have already published many volumes of the kind, some dealing with the whole animal kingdom, some with a single class; they are now bringing out a series of volumes under the editorship of Dr. Martin Duncan, and in the mean time they present us with a single volume of a still more popular character by Dr. Perceval Wright. This book, as we are told in the preface, is intended for that large class of readers who, while they take an intelligent interest in the study of natural history, have but little taste for the technical details which would naturally form the bulk of a scientific manual on the subject. For this reason the space devoted to the several orders is roughly proportioned to the amount of interest generally felt in them. The mammalia occupy more than a third of the volume, the remaining orders of the vertebrata about an equal space, while the whole of the invertebrates are compressed into the space that remains—about one-fourth of that occupied by the vertebrates. The author tells us that his aim has been “to compile a story-book about animals, and at the same time in some degree to write a scientific manual.” This is undoubtedly a difficult thing to do, and to do it thoroughly and in the best style would be a fitting life-work for a great naturalist. It would have to be done as a labour of love, not to the order of a publisher; and the illustrations should be of the very best kind, so as fully to exhibit the beauty, the variety, and the intricacy of nature.
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W., A. Popular Natural History 1 . Nature 21, 232–235 (1880). https://doi.org/10.1038/021232a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/021232a0