[An Outline of the Smaller British Birds, by Robert A. Slaney, Esq.
M.P.]
This little volume is evidently the production of an intelligent,
humane, and truly amiable mind, whose enthusiasm on a favourite study is
calculated to win attention and to enamour others of the same subject.
It is painful to reflect, that while we are everywhere surrounded by
natural objects, animate and inanimate, each replete with interest and
beauty of its own, so many of us should be ignorant, and thence
insensible and heedless of these charms. This negligence is almost
culpable, for so slight is the expense of time and study required to
render ourselves familiar with many of the works of nature, that the
busiest and poorest could afford the sacrifice, and thus put themselves
in possession of a pure and cheap source of enjoyment. But old writers
encumbered the simplicity of natural history with Latin and Greek terms,
and words of _interminable_ length, making appear difficult and abstruse
what in reality is not so. It has been the laudable object of Mr.
Slaney, as of other writers of the present day, to make these matters
easy, as they should be. In the little volume now before us, our readers
will find every thing perfectly intelligible to the commonest capacity,
and its attentive perusal will delight and enrich their minds with
numerous interesting accounts of the formation and habits of the
beautiful winged creatures we every day see flitting around us, while,
by indicating the course and modes of observation to be pursued, it will
facilitate their acquirement of other and more extensive branches of
natural history.
In allusion to the general ignorance on these subjects even among the
wealthy and educated classes of society, Mr. Slaney says very amusingly,
“We have sometimes asked our fair young friends if they knew as many of
the smaller birds as they could count on their fingers? They usually
answered confidently in the affirmative, but could seldom get much
beyond one hand.”
Now this ignorance, which is mere negligence, we again say is almost
culpable, and, as it tends to remove this ignorance by a single and
delightful process, we therefore warmly recommend this ‘Outline of the
Smaller British Birds.’ The reader will find in it, beside Mr. Slaney’s
own descriptions and observations, many amusing and instructive extracts
from some of the most distinguished writers on natural history, such as
White of Selborne, who has so admirably described what passed under his
own eyes in a province of England; Wilson, originally a common weaver of
Paisley near Glasgow, who found an unknown world of beauty in the birds
of the American wilds, his accounts of which unite the accuracy of
philosophy with the beauty and glow of poetry; Knapp, the author of the
‘Journal of a Naturalist;’ the late Sir Humphry Davy, &c. &c.