8. Communications by the Trustees, with reference to the Report of the Commissioners. 1850. 9. Petitions, complaining of the Arrangements in the 3. Preussen's Deutsche Politik. Die Drei Fürsten- bünde, 1785, 1806, 1849. By Dr. W. A. Schmidt 172 VIII.-The Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey. Edited by his Son, the Rev. Charles Cuthbert Southey - 197 IX.-1. The Queen's Ministers responsible for the Pope's new Hierarchy in England. By Dudley M. Per- 2. An Appeal to the Reason and good Feeling of the English People. By Cardinal Wiseman. 3. The Church of England and the Church of Rome contrasted. By the Hon. and Rev. Grantham 4. Catholic Safeguards against the Errors, Corruptions, and Novelties of the Church of Rome. By the Rev. I.-1. Ornamental and Domestic Poultry; their History and Management. By the Rev. Edmund Saul Dixon, M.A., Rector of Intwood-with-Keswick, 2. Poultry their Breeding, Rearing, Diseases, and General Management. By Walter B. Dickson. 1838. 3. Farming for Ladies; or, a Guide to the Poultry- yard, the Dairy, and Piggery. By the Author of 4. The Poultry-yard: a Practical View of the best Method of Selecting, Rearing, and Breeding the various Species of Domestic Fowl. By Peter Bos- 6. A Treatise on the Breeding, Rearing, and Fattening of Poultry. By James Main, A.L.S. 7. Ornamental, Aquatic, and Domestic Fowl, and Game Birds; their Importation, Breeding, Rearing, and General Management. By J. J. Nolan II.-1. Histoire de Madame de Maintenon et des principaux Evénements du Règne de Louis XIV. Par le Duc V.-1. Report of the General Board of Health on the Exe- cution of the Nuisances Removal Act, and Public 2. Appendices to the Report of the General Board of Health on the Supply of Water to the Metropolis. 3. Report of the Select Committee on Private Bills. 4. Report on the Subterranean Condition of West- minster; with a Pictorial Map. By Henry Austin, Consulting Engineer, and Joseph Smith, Assistant 5. Report on the Sanitary Condition of the City of London for the Year 1849-50. By J. Simon, Esq. VII.-1. Das Leben Johann Calvins des grossen Reformators. Von Paul Henry, Dr. der Theologie, Prediger und 2. The Life and Times of John Calvin, the Great Re- former. Translated from the German of Paul Henry, D.D., &c. By Henry Stebbing, D.D., F.R.S., &c. Translated by the Rev. John M’Gill. 5. The Life of John Calvin. Compiled from Authen- THE QUARTERLY REVIEW. ART. I.—A Hunter's Life in South Africa. By Roualeyn Gordon Cumming, Esq., of Altyre. 2 vols. post 8vo. 1850. NATURE in her various aspects and relations presents to Man, her servant and interpreter, as many fields of contemplation and action. She is also differently reflected from the inner mind of different individuals, and each investigates or deals with her in the fashion most congenial to his own disposition, tastes, and tendencies. The earth, the waters, the atmosphere, the celestial orbs, the fixed and calculable laws of inorganic matter, exercise one class of thinkers; for another the varied forms and modifiable properties of the living world have more attractions. Life, moreover, and its manifold vestments and products are studied under various conditions and circumstances-in the field, in the farm, in the museum, in the dissecting-room. One man notes the habits of the living, another scrutinises the structures of the dead; a third seeks in the animal kingdom a profitable investment of skill and labour; a fourth finds in it the coveted scope for the exercise of the old combative and destructive instincts of our race. The naturalist of one order goes forth to the far wilderness, it may be, or the trackless forest, the denizens of which he finds in the full exercise of their faculties, unchecked by the encroachment and unmodified by the influence of civilized man. Like our author, perhaps, a very Nimrod by nature he is daily in full exercise of his muscular powers, moves where he lists, breathes the pure air perfumed by aromatic herbs, sleeps under the canopy of the stars, wakes to the wild notes of the migrating birds that float in the upper air, or is roused by the deep and terrible music of the lions' roar; he has every energy of an adventurous and fearless spirit called forth in the chace and attack, when he matches his strength against the elephant's, his courage against the king of beasts, and his craft against the wily wolf or the watchful antelope. He sees the noblest quadrupeds in all their native beauty and vigour, displaying their characteristic attitudes and modes of motion; he hears the free utterance of their various voices; and watches the manifestations of their instincts and the VOL. LXXXVIII. NO. CLXXV. unrestrained B unrestrained enjoyment of their wants. The phenomena so observed, however, are essential to the comprehension of the outward characters which the zoologist, and of the internal structures which the anatomist, may afterwards make known; and their narrative forms a valuable and the most interesting contribution to a true and philosophical history of animals. The museum-naturalist has a narrower walk of research, but his more finished labours, again, are essentially ancillary to the other's rough draughts from living Nature. Calm and sedentary, in the close atmosphere of the cabinet he scrutinizes the dried and stuffed skins of birds and beasts, and the analogous exuviæ of other animals. If he be an ichthyologist, he counts the rays of the fins and contrasts their relative hardness or softness: if a herpetologist, he pores into the mouth of the doubtful toad or triton, to study the shape of the tongue or detect the position and numbers of the minute teeth; or he applies the pocket-lens to the lizard to determine the number of its lateral or femoral pores; or he measures the supra-cranial scales and reckons up the subcaudal scutes of the snake. The ornithologist, with his box of bird-skins before him, expands the wing and the tail, counting sedulously and comparing the length of the quill-feathers; or he notes the pattern of the scutation on the tarsus, and the position of the nostrils on the beak. The mammalogist directs his attention to the hoofs or the claws of his subject; to the number, kind, and situation of the teeth; to the shades of colour and the character of the hair or fur. And all this tedious toil is cheerfully encountered in the hope of detecting a 'new species.' For of such materials, in fact, the great basis of the zoological edifice must be built, and it is well that the labourer deems himself rewarded by the privilege which he assumes of inscribing his own name upon each specific brick that he adds to the pile. But it must be confessed that an exclusive attachment to this contracted sphere and minute kind of research has a tendency to cramp the intellect, and to engender a self-complacent overvaluing of such labours and of the labourer himself. A species-maker is prone to underrate contributions to natural history that come in a plain English garb, unbedizened by the technical compounds he delights to manufacture; and the mere classifier is apt to look with sceptical eyes on whatever seems to contradict the precise definitions of his artificial groups, or tends to break down the wordbarriers that separate in his 'system' one group of animals from another. These reflections were forced upon us by the remark with which a worthy acquaintance of that stamp threw down the second volume of the work now before us: Who can believe what a man writes who makes the hippopotamus spout like a whale, and figures |