‘Dr. Hartwig’s volume is a perfect model of the popular treatment of a large subject. It is at once full, clear, concise, and attractive; and it possesses the merit, absolutely unique as far as our experience goes in works of this kind, of being readable from end to end. Though closely packed with details—sufficiently so indeed to be a good, though of course not an exhaustive, book of reference for practical use—these are so well selected and arranged, so concisely related, and so carefully subordinated to general views, that they never produce any sensation of weariness, monotony, or confusion. There are some admirable chromoxylographs, and an infinitude of excellent woodcuts scattered up and down the pages with a profuse hand. In short, the Sea has received from Dr. Hartwig a recommendation to public attention which can scarcely perhaps increase its popularity, but which will certainly enable many of its admirers to regard it with a more enlarged and intelligent admiration. The title, large as it is, does the work some injustice, for we are apt to forget the Sea itself in the Living Wonders which it nourishes; and we scarcely include, in our conception of life, the vegetation of the ocean. This, however, is no fault of Dr. Hartwig’s; for he fairly exhausts his subject. The first seventy pages are devoted to a very clear account of the general features of the sea. Its extent and depth and colour, its coast-line and currents, the height and velocity of its waves, the theory of its tides, the mighty circulation whereby the life-currents of the earth rise in evaporation from the ocean surface, are dispersed through the upper regions of the air, are condensed in rain, and, trickling through the soil, return in rivers to their native reservoir, are all set forth with great skill and beauty of language. Dr. Hartwig then passes on to the inhabitants of the sea. First come the “hugest of living things,” the Cetaceans, with their kindred the seals and walruses—animals which in their anatomy and habits form a curious link between the tribes of earth and water, and in their vast size and outlandish forms seem, at least in fancy, to connect the present age with distant geological periods.... Penguins and auks and albatrosses next come under our notice: then turtles, the only modern representatives of the ancient saurians; then follows a description of many of the more curious fishes—among which we notice some singular creatures with fins and tails and gills, which can not only live for days out of water, but actually creep up trees and catch insects. Crabs and barnacles, worms and molluscs, star-fishes, sea-urchins, coral-polyps, and our familiar friends the sea-anemones, all come in for their fair share of attention. Even the microscopic foraminifera and diatomaceæ are included: one chapter is given to marine plants, and another to the primitive ocean; while the whole is appropriately closed with a brief sketch of the progress of maritime discovery. And all this is packed into an elegant volume of 400 pages. Never, surely, was such a mine of information presented in so pleasing a shape. Dr. Hartwig has skimmed the very cream of marine science, and thrown all its daintiest morsels into a single attractive dish.’
Guardian, First Notice.
‘This is the third edition, considerably enlarged, of the first and best of Dr. Hartwig’s beautiful and popular volumes on natural history. The size of the book is increased by a hundred pages; a good deal of it is remoulded; two whole new chapters have been added, one on Marine Caves, the other on Marine Constructions, such as Lighthouses and Breakwaters; some of the old illustrations have disappeared, but their place has been supplied by more and better; so that the new edition really amounts to a recasting of the entire book. It was a very good book before; it is better and more complete now. Whether we regard the letterpress or the numerous illustrations, it takes a rank second to none among ornamental and popular books of science.’ Guardian, Second Notice.
THE TROPICAL WORLD: a Popular Scientific Account of the Natural History of the Animal and Vegetable Kingdoms and the Equatorial Regions. With 8 Chromoxylographic Plates and about 800 Woodcuts. 8vo. price 21s.
‘This work well deserves popularity, and is just the book to interest young persons who have the sense to perceive that the truths of nature are not only stranger but far more profitable than some fictions. All that intelligent women and children desire to know about the tropics will be found here—the aspects of nature, the rivers and coasts, the great sandy deserts, the gigantic vegetation, and the animal denizens from insects to apes; but excluding the tropical varieties of man.’
Medical Times and Gazette.
‘Dr. Hartwig has followed up his admirable book on the Sea by another, not less admirable, on the Tropical World. The same wide erudition, vivid powers of description, and happy intermixture of popular and scientific treatment are displayed in it; and its pages are adorned by the same profusion of elegant illustration. Within the tropics Nature revels in her wildest luxuriance: bird, beast, reptile, and plant take there strange forms and colours, or attain unusual magnitude. Dr. Hartwig has steeped his pen in the glowing atmosphere of the tropics; and with it, as with a wand, he leads us through successive regions of a sunny fairyland teeming with beautiful natural objects in inexhaustible variety, changeful and brilliant as the effulgent landscapes amid which they flourish.’
Guardian.
‘The tropics give us something like a picture of the antediluvian world. The heat and moisture, with the consequent luxuriance of vegetation in tangled overgrowth, the violence of the storms, and the ferocity and hideousness of many animal forms, mark out these equatorial regions as very striking, very picturesque, very interesting, but not very agreeable as a residence. Unless we are young, robust, and adventurous, it is pleasanter to read of such regions in our milder Europe, and to visit them in imagination, following the adventures of others. And this journey Dr. Hartwig enables us to make through his excellent compilation.... We have indicated the nature of Dr. Hartwig’s book, and have only to add that it is compiled with great skill, and written in a clear and agreeable style. It is seldom that we have occasion to notice a more satisfactory work of the class to which it belongs.’