and this, combined with a fair-sized aquarium and vivarium in every school, and a weekly excursion with a good field naturalist, would do for children nearly as much as all the books. Like the people we all meet who quote from the Bible and Shakespeare without ever reading one or the other, so we should have a generation growing up who were at least imbued with an interest in animal life. Once create the love of zoology, and all the rest will follow; a knowledge from books alone is always second-hand. One might as well expect an appreciation of art from Midas because he has purchased a picture gallery.
This book is a means to an end, and will doubtless help on the work. It gives so much information that the space at disposal is not sufficient, in many cases, to elucidate the details, and hence the authors are often, like preachers, a little over the heads of their congregation. The illustrations are apt, but very often borrowed—though with all acknowledgment—and sometimes "after Brehm." Whether illustrations should be taken from the works of the taxidermist is a very open question, even when representing such excellent work as may be found in the Field Columbian Museum. Sometimes the text is a little vague, as when we read that "the Crocodile in the strict sense is found in the Nile and other African rivers," as well as in certain American localities, without any reference to its oriental habitats.
As an appendix, there is a very useful and suggestive outline of laboratory work, and a bibliography of standard works.
If under the pseudonym of scientific ornithology the ubiquitous collector did much damage in "bird-land," by the indiscriminate acquisition of eggs and nests, science seems now to have provided the antidote in the camera. The lovely photographs of nests and eggs, true to nature, and possessing all the real charms of the environment, which now embellish ornithological literature, will probably create a more exact knowledge of these objects, and prevent much unnecessary destruction. Better that the trade of the dealer should perish than that the birds must
