They flutter over, gentle quadrupeds,
And birds that scarce have learned the fear of man,
Are here, and sliding reptiles of the ground,
Startlingly beautiful.”
This vast wild region is inhabited by many animals that are rarely found in any other portion of the State. The bear, the moose, the panther, the deer, and most fur-bearing animals, make their homes among its mountains. Arctic birds, too, that are never known farther south, are seen in abundance. The whole district covers an area of about six thousand square miles. The western district is eminent for its fertility and beauty, and has also a high degree of zoological interest.
The number of quadrupeds enumerated in the report, as found within the State, is something more than one hundred. Each of these is scientifically and fully described. Included in the volume are a great number of illustrations, taken with the greatest care from the living animals or the best specimens that could be found. The real colors are preserved, and in every case the relative size is indicated. The outlines, for the purpose of accuracy, were always taken with a camera lucida, and the illustrations, drawn by Hill, were lithographed by Endicott.
The whole style of the work is eminently worthy the enterprise, results of which it contains, and the State which undertook its fulfilment. We look for the forthcoming volumes with no little interest. The botanical department has been under the charge of John Toney; the mineralogical and chemical were assigned to Lewis C. Beck; the geological to W. W. Mather, Ebenezer Emmons, James Hall, and Leonard Vanuxem, and the palæontological to Timothy A. Conrad. Beside these reports, the results of the survey appear in eight several collections of specimens of the animals, plants, soils, minerals, rocks and fossils, found within the State—one of which collections constitutes a museum of natural history at the capital of the State, and the others are distributed among collegiate institutions. We rejoice at the completion of this great survey, and hope soon to see a similar exploration effected in every State of the Union. The cause of science will receive from it an aid of which scientific men alone can rightly estimate the value.
The Holy War, made by Shaddai upon Diabolus, for the Regaining of the Metropolis of the World. By John Bunyan. Philadelphia, American Sunday School Union.
The celebrated Dr. Owen was occasionally one of the hearers of Bunyan, when he preached in London; and being asked by Charles the Second how a learned man, like him, could listen to the prating of an illiterate tinker, he is said to have replied, “May it please your Majesty, could I possess that tinker’s abilities for preaching, I would gladly relinquish all my scholarship.” His genius as an author was even greater than he exhibited in the pulpit. Southey, Macauley, and other eminent critics, regard him as one of the “immortal authors of England.” The Pilgrim’s Progress has been the most popular of his sixty or seventy works. Probably no book by an uninspired writer has been more universally read. The Holy War was written ten years after the appearance of that beautiful creation, and if not equal to it in all respects, is certainly one of the most ingenious allegories in the language, as well as one of the most useful exhibitions of practical Christianity. The edition before us is superior to any other printed in America, in its typography and illustrations.