Abstract
RURAL life and scenes contemplated in an expansive frame of mind provide excuses for the publication of many pretty books. This one does not differ essentially from many others fashioned on the same model. A country scene, a general knowledge of natural history, an impressionable nature, and a certain facility in the expression of poetic sentiment, seem the chief qualifications of the contributors to literature of this kind. A preface is followed by a “prelude,” a dog is “a canine friend,” and its runs are “peregrinations.” We also read of “larks singing in the meridian blue,” the brook “which whilom rippled its pure waters over a bed of cleanest sand,” “the realm of spiritual immutabilities,” “the obyte of summer,” and other fanciful matters. The book is not without some attractive and instructive notes on animate nature, but they are almost lost in a maze of platitudes and inconsequent remarks. The statement on p. 39 that grains of corn “have been found in Egyptian mummy-cases, from which marvellously prolific stems have been raised in this country” contains a popular belief as to the growth of mummy-wheat which has been shown over and over again to have no scientific foundation.
Hand in Hand with Dame Nature.
By W. V. Burgess. Pp. x + 240. (Manchester: Sherratt and Hughes, 1900.)
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Hand in Hand with Dame Nature . Nature 63, 325 (1901). https://doi.org/10.1038/063325c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/063325c0