“The early love of Nature, especially as manifested by the Habits and Instincts of Animals to which you refer, in your own case, is so common to a healthy boy’s nature, that the Parlour Menagerie, a work so singularly full of interesting examples culled from so wide a range of Zoology, and so fully and beautifully illustrated cannot fail to be a favourite with the rising generation—and many succeeding ones—of Juvenile Naturalists. When I recall the ‘Description of 300 Animals’ (including the Cockatrice and all Pliny’s monsters) which fed my early appetite for Natural History, I can congratulate my grandchildren on being provided with so much more wholesome food through your persevering and discriminating labours.—Richard Owen.”
From the Right Hon. John Bright, M.P.
To the Editor, Parlour Menagerie.
“I doubt not the Parlour Menagerie will prove very interesting, as indeed it has already been found to be by those of my family who have read it. I hope one of the effects of our better public education will be to create among our population a more humane disposition towards what we call the inferior animals. Much may be done by impressing on the minds of children the duty of kindness in their treatment of animals, and I hope this will not be neglected by the teachers of our schools.... I feel sure what you have done will bear good fruit.—John Bright.”
“The Parlour Menagerie is well named. Full as an egg of information and most agreeable reading and engravings, where before was there such a menagerie?”—Animal World.
“We have never seen a better collection of anecdotes and descriptions of animals than this, and it has the great advantage of numerous and admirable woodcuts. Pictorial illustrations form an important and valuable addition to any such collection. Those in the book before us are of remarkable excellence.... We highly commend the spirit which pervades the book, a spirit intensely alien to cruelty of every kind. On the whole, it is one of the very best of its kind, and we warrant both its usefulness and acceptability.”—Literary World.
“Mr. Hogg is, without question, a specialist in the art of catering for the literary tastes of the young.”—Shropshire Guardian.