We had occasion, some short time since, to speak in terms of deserved
commendation of the excellent _Handbook to the Antiquities of the
British Museum_ which had been prepared by Mr. Vaux. Another and most
important department of our great national collection has just found in
Dr. Mantell an able scientific, yet popular expositor of its treasures.
His _Petrifactions and their Teachings, or a Handbook to the Gallery of
Organic Remains in the British Museum_, forms the new volume of Bohn's
_Scientific Library_; and, thanks to the acquirements of Dr. Mantell,
his good sense in divesting his descriptions, as much as possible, of
technical language, and the numerous well-executed woodcuts by which it
is illustrated, the work is admirably calculated to accomplish the
purpose for which it has been prepared; namely, to serve as a handbook
to the general visitor to the Gallery of Organic Remains, and as an
explanatory Catalogue for the more scientific observer.
To satisfy the deep interest taken by many persons, who are unable to
study the phenomena themselves, in the numerous new and remarkable facts
relating to the formation and temperature of the globe, and to the
movements of the ocean and of the atmosphere, as well as to the
influence of both on climate, and on the adaptation of the earth for the
dwelling of man, which the exertions of scientific men have of late
years revealed, was the motive which led Professor Buff to write his
_Familiar Letters on the Physics of the Earth; treating of the chief
Movements of the Land, the Waters, and the Air, and the Forces that give
rise to them_: and Dr. Hoffman has been induced to undertake an English
edition of them from a desire of rendering accessible to the public a
source of information from which he has derived no less of profit than
of pleasure: which profit and which pleasure will, we have no doubt, be
shared by a large number of readers of this unpretending but very
instructive little volume.
_Welsh Sketches, chiefly Ecclesiastical, to the close of the Twelfth
Century._ These sketches, which treat of Bardism, the Kings of Wales,
the Welsh Church, Monastic Institutions, and Giraldus Cambrensis, are
from the pen of the amiable author of the _Essays on Church Union_, and
are written in the same attractive and popular style.
About five-and-thirty years ago the Treatment of the Insane formed the
subject of a Parliamentary inquiry, and the public mind was shocked by
the appalling scenes revealed before a Committee of the House of
Commons. But the publication of them did its work; for that such scenes
are now but matters of history, we owe to that inquiry. The condition of
the London Poor, in like manner, is now in the course of investigation;
not indeed by an official commission, but by a private individual, Mr.
Henry Mayhew, who is gathering by personal visits to the lowest haunts
of poverty and its attendant vices, and from personal communication with
the people he is describing, an amount of fact illustrative of the
social conditions of the poorest classes in this metropolis, which
deserves, and must receive, the earnest attention of the statesman, the
moralist, and the philanthropist. His work is entitled _London Labour
and the London Poor, a Cyclopaedia of the Condition and Earnings of those
that_ WILL _work, those that_ CANNOT _work, and those that_ WILL NOT
_work_. Vol. I. _The London Street Folk_, is just completed. It is of
most painful interest, for it paints in vivid colours the misery,
ignorance, and demoralisation in which thousands are living at our very
doors; and its perusal must awaken in every right-minded man an earnest
desire to do his part towards assisting the endeavours of the honest
poor to earn their bread--towards instructing the ignorant, and towards
reforming the vicious.
CATALOGUES RECEIVED.--Williams and Norgate's (14. Henrietta Street)
German Book Circular No. 28.; J. Lilly's (19. King Street) very Cheap
Clearance Catalogue No. 2.; J. Miller's (43. Chandos Street) Catalogue
No. 31. of Books Old and New; W. Brown's (130. Old Street) Register of
Literature, Ancient, Modern, English, Foreign, No. 1.; T. Kerslake's (3.
Park Street, Bristol) Catalogue of Geological and Scientific Library of
the late Rev. T. Williams.