THE LIBRARY TABLE, 57
The experiment of forming so large a "sanctuary" in a
district embracing so much wooded ground, is one of a remarkable
character, and the results will be watched with great interest
by all naturalists.
Mr. Buxton appends to his report an appeal to the pro-
prietors of land adjoining the forest to give all possible protection
to the Roe Deer and Badgers. As they frequently wander into
the adjoining plantations he hope that these gentlemen will
combine with the Forest authorities to preserve these interest-
ing species.
THE LIBRARY TABLE.
Round the Year : A series of Short Nature Studies. 1896.
The Natural History of Aquatic Insects. 1895. Both by Professor
L. C. Miall, F.R.S.; with illustrations' by A. R. Hammond,
F.L.S. (Macmillan & Co., 6s. each).
These two books by Professor Miall are in our opinion of a very note-
worthy character. They admirably illustrate the revulsion of opinion, daily
gaining force, in favour of the view that the delightful observations and
studies of the "Field Naturalist" are deserving of high esteem as educational
agencies and as a means of enlarging and enobling the mind. The coming
rejuvenescence of the fashion of the out-of-door study of nature, after decades
of depreciation and neglect, is a very welcome sign of the times. The
distinguished originator of the "type system" of teaching biology in our
schools and colleges, is known to have regretted the extremes to which the
curriculum had been carried, and the exclusion from it of any side lights
which would lead the young beginner to feel that he was studying plants and
creatures endowed with the glorious gift of life, and possessing a thousand
individualities and relations to other living things in the air, the earth, and
the waters under the earth. The teachers in our "Elementary Biology"
classes behaved like the scene-shifters in the "Critic"—having been given a
good thing, they never knew when to be done with it! Natural History, the
delight and inspiration of White, Forbes, Darwin and Wallace, has in many
schools become degraded to a mere art of skilful dissection and mechanical
section-cutting, almost repulsive in its literalness, and often acting as a
positive deterrent to the evolution of the budding biologist. Many a boy or
girl has gone through such a course, and yet has been unable to recognise the
commonest field weed, insect, or pond-creature, or sadder still has been led to
look on biology as a somewhat repulsive "school subject," one bearing no
relation to the intellectual pleasures of life, affording no fascinating recreation
for leisure hours, no delightful solace for old age. The study of biology, the
"science of life,I was fast losing its highest value, and the "Field Naturalist"
bade fair to become as extinct as the—pterodactyl.
But, as hinted above, there are already signs of more rational and
suggestive views of the educational and pleasure-giving utility of biology