On this page
- Departments (1)
-
Text (4)
-
JSo. 437, August 7,1858.] T HE L BADER, ...
-
ITif in* tf m 4 i> 3LlU,rUHIlt« '
-
—? Critics are not the legislators, but ...
-
ACTINOLOGIA BRITANNIC A. JLctinohgia Bri...
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
-
-
Transcript
-
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Jso. 437, August 7,1858.] T He L Bader, ...
JSo . 437 , August 7 , 1858 . ] T HE L BADER , 777
Itif In* Tf M 4 I≫ 3llu,Ruhilt« '
iftttataw .
—? Critics Are Not The Legislators, But ...
—? Critics are not the legislators , but the judges and police of literature- They do not make laws—they interpret and try to enforce them . — Edinburgh Review .
Actinologia Britannic A. Jlctinohgia Bri...
ACTINOLOGIA BRITANNIC A . JLctinohgia Britannica * A History of the British Sea-Anemones and Madrepores ; -with Coloured Figures of all the Species . By Philip Hertry Gosse , F . K . S . Parts I . —III . Van Voorst . The Story of a Jiouider ; or , the Gleanings from the Notebook of a Field Geologist . By Archibald Geikie , of the Geological Survey of Great Britain . Illustrated with Woodcuts . Edinburgh : T . Constable and Co . A visit to the sea-siiore is no longer a mere idler ' s holiday , without other pursuit or object than a stroll up one parade and down another , a rush to
the news-room , or , at best , a sail out to sea , or a row in an open boat to catch a breeze or an appetite for lunch . The morning need not now be wasted at an open window , with telescope in hand , in the vain endeavour to scan and criticise any lovely form that ventures into the deep ' . within the radius of your view . The old , well-thumbed novels , too , are at a discount , and the circulating libraries themselves are deserted when , wind and weather permitting , Paterfamilias and the young members of his household are off across the sands on to some distant rock-pool to hunt un the wonders of the
shore . And broadcast are these wonders about and around you at every step , under every piece of tangled sea-weed , attached to every piece of floating wood , or buried in the sand and shingles beneath your feet . What a revolution has been Drought about in a few years by a few scientific experiments ; for it was only in 1850 that Mr . Waringtony of Apothecaries' Hall , succeeded in establishing the true balance of animal and vegetable life by the introduction of the scavenger , in the shape of the watersnail , into the mimic rock-pool which he had set up in a narrow , dingy , back street of a crowded city , where to this day it still flourishes , the reward of " untiring skill and perseverance . But that first
attempt was not made with the denizens of the sea . Sea water could not then he had with the facility we can now procure it in inland towns , and this first watcr-vivary was simply a large twelve-gallon receiver , filled to about two-thirds with river water and some clean washed sand and gravel , with some fragments of rock-wovk so placed as to afford the fish shelter from the sun ' s rajs . A plant of valisneria spiralis and a couple of gold fish were then introduced , and all progressed well for a time , till the decayed leaves of the valisneria and confervoid growth rendered the water turbid , and so the fish sickened . Recourse was had to the natural scavengers of ponds and ditches , and a few limnca stagnalis were added , and the decaying and coufcrvoid growth being the natural food of all water-snails , the mischief was speedily overcome , and all again became prospcrous .
Emboldened by his success with the fresh-water vivary , Mr . Wanngton determined to ascertain the component parts of sea water , in the hope that chemistry might furnish as good a substitute for sea water as it had long since done in the shape of galenicals for the natural mineral waters ot the Continent . The result was , that to prepare ten gallons of artificial sea water there should be 7 i oz . Of sulphate of magnesia , 2 f oz . of limo , 434-oz . of
chloride of sodium , 6 oz . of magnesium , l ^ oz . of potassium , 21 grains of bromide of magnesium , and 21 grains of carbonate of lime . Artificial sea water prepared according to this formula cannot be distinguished from pure sea water j and , moreover , iish and sca-anemoncs , Crustacea and molluscs breed and thrive in the one as woAl as the other . Any apothecary Avill make up these salts , and by these simple means marine animals and plants may be kept in perfect health , even where sea water itself W not obtainable .
About the same period that Mr . Warington was engaged with those experiments , Mr . Gosse was pursuing others of a similar kind with no less success , aud Ins pleasant book , A Naturalist ' s Rambles on the Devonshire Coast , led the van to the ! sfc of publications , some good , some bnd , some lncuiTcrcnt , which have since appeared on the subject . Then came Mr . Mitchell ' s vivarium , in the gardens of the Zoological Society in the Regent ' s \ iu' an (^ ^* e au * -ea ^ cl > "na t » ° hippopotamus were both forgotten for a season . Mr . Gosso was the
purveyor , and during his management , certainly , it must be admitted , that that exhibition , reached its zenith , though even now , in its decadency , it is well worthy of a visit . Mr . Gosse seized upon the water vivary as his empire , as Allert Smith had done on _ Mont Blanc , and from his rapid pen appeared , in quick succession , The Aquarium : an Unveiling of the Wonders of the Beep Sea ; A Manual of Marine Zoology for the British Isles ; Tenby : a
Sea-side-Holiday , and several works of less pretension . To these we have now to add that which we announce at the head of this article , which is issued on the first of each alternate month , each number consisting of thirty-two pages of letter-press , and an accurately coloured group of sea-anemones and madrepores . The book is beautifully got up , as indeed are all the works on natural history which issue from the same establishment .
Prior to Mr . Warington's and Mr . Gosse ' s experiments , which resulted in the introduction of the marine vivary into our drawing-rooms and studies , Dr . Johnson ' s History of British Zoophytes was the great ; authority on the subject . Indeed , not withstanding the more popular works by Mr . Gosse , Mr . Lewes , Mr . Kingsley , Mr . Landsborough , Mr . Tugwell , Mr . Sowerby , Mr . Woods , and others , if we wish to go scientifically into the history of British zoophytes , Dr . Johnson ' s book is still indispensable .
la his second edition ( says Mr . Gosse ) lie has enumerated thirty-six species of sea-anemones and corala as belonging to our fauna , of which six are pretty certainly either false species or falsely attributed to our shores . The last ten years have raised th « number of described British species to about seventy ; and though it is more than probable that an equal proportion of these must be cancelled by careful criticism , yet a larger number ¦ will still remain , whose characters have to fee searched up from the pages of periodicals or other works not specially devoted to the subject . Moreover , those who have most studied these animals -will justify me in asserting that , even of those species which have long been known , there is not one -which does not require to be recharacterisedhot from books , but from personal examination—and wliose history does not need to beentirelv rewritten .
• Such being our author ' s views , he has been collecting his materials for several years , which furnish him at the present moment with an . amount of matter , both pictorial and literary , not only derived from his own individual efforts , but from those of scientific friends and correspondents , in so great an abundance , that he feels that tlie time is come when they should be communicated to the world . The volume wil l probably not exceed three hundred and eighty-four pages , or twelve parts , illustrated by carefully-finished drawings of every species , taken , for the most part , from living specimens which have become denizens of the mavine
vivary-The author ' s style is too well known to need further remark than that in the present publication tlie more scientific descriptions arc relieved by pleasant and agreeable anecdotes illustrative of the manners and customs of these wonderful animalflowers of the ocean , which cannot fail to render it as welcome a guest in the drawing-room as in the study of the more scientific observer . Mr . Gosse separates our sea-anemones into two great families , tlie Matridiadce , with variouslj branched and fringed tentacles , and the Sagartiadce , with broad base , simple smooth tentacles , and the power of emitting missile cords , which they use for tlie purpose of
disabling their prey . Our author gives the following reason for adopting this name : — The genus Sagartia was published by me in a memoir read before the Linncnn Society , March 20 th , 1 S 55 . I tlien . included in it Dianthus , as well as the species to which I now confine it . The character on > vhich I mainly relied in constituting it , appears to me , on maturcr consideration , to mark a group of higher value than that of a genus , and I have accordingly used it to characterise a family . Hence it became necessary to make a fresh diagnosis of the genus , which , though large , appears a very natural one . The name I have chosen alludes to the peculiar mode of disabling their prey by means of missile cords , which ia possessed
preeminently by the species of thia group , recalling to my mind a graphic passage in the -writing * of the Father of History . " In the army of Xerxes , " he says , " there ¦ was a certain race called Sagftrtians . The mode of lighting practised by these men was this : —When they engaged an enemy , they threw out a rope with a noose « t the end . Whatever any ono caught , whether horse or man , he dragged towards himself , and those that Tvcrc entangled in tlie coils wero speedily put to death . " One of the most beautiful of this lasso-throwing family is the Sagartia Vmurta , the o range-disk ca anemone , once so plentiful at Lidstcp , St . Margaret ' s Island , and under Tenby Head ; hut , Alas ! it is so no more . "When I revisited Tenby in
1856 , I found that these caves and almost every accessible part of the neighbouring coast were pretty well denuded of the lovely animal-flowers which , in 1834 ,. had blossomed there as in a parterre . I fear that the hammers and chisels of amateur naturalists have been the desolating agents ; and my friends tell me , not without a semi-earnest reproachfulness , that 1 am myself not guiltless of bringing about the consummation . If the visitors were gainers to the same amount as the rocks were losers , there would be less cause for regret ; but owing to difficulty and . unskilfulness combined , probably half a dozen anemones are destroyed for one that goes into the aquarium .
But there are other wonders of the deep besides sea-anemones and sea-plants ; the latter of themselves anew pleasur e , to the horticulturist , when attached specimens are introduced into tanks filled with real or artificial sea water , and instructions for the growth of which , are to be met with in various works which treat of the management of the marine vivary . There are boulders and sea-pebbles , which , are not less interesting to those who delight in contemplating the wonders of the shore , or in investigating the revolutions which mark the periods of the natural transformations of the beautiful " green earth" which we inhabit . Mr . Geikie has added to
our stores a little , beautifully got-up volume upon Field Geology , which is not less pleasant reading in . its way , on the still life of the coast , than Mr . Kingsley ' s delightful Glaucus , with its vivid pictures , on the living wonders of the sea-shore . We quite agree ia the remark that—It cannot be too widely known , or too often pressed on the attention , especially of the young , that a true ! acquaintance with science , so delightful to its possessors , is not to be acquired at second-hand . Text-books and manuals are valuable only ao far as they supplement and direct our own observations . A man whose knowledge of Nature is derived solely from these sources , differs as much from one who betakes himself to Nature
herself as a dusty , desiccated mummy does from a living man . You have the same bones and sinews in loth j but in the one they are hard and dry , wholly incapable of action , in the other are instinct with freshness and life . He who would know what physical science really is , must go out into the fields and learn it for himself ; and whatever branch he may choose , he will not be long in discovering that a forenoon intelligently spent there must be deemed of far more worth than days and weeks passed among books . He sees the objects of his study with his own eyes , and not through " the spectacles of
books ; " facts come home to mm with a vividness and reality they never can possess in the closet : the free , buoyant air brightens his spirits and invigorates his mind , and he returns again to his desk with a store of new health , and pleasure , and knowledge . Now that everybody is running down to the coast , led on as bj a kind of natural instinct , and doctors are sending invalids to the sea for the sake of imbibing ozone of Nature ' s own manipulation , it is pleasant to provide oneself with the means of outdoor rational recreation and enjoyment , and it is to writers like Mr . Geikie , whose works
Breathe a soul into the silent walla of rocks and . downs which form the boundary of the sea , that we would call the attention of convalescents particularly . A geologist requires but few implements : — He need not burden himself with accoutrements . A hammer , pretty stout ia its dimensions , with a round , blunt face , and a flat , sharp tail , a note-book , and a good pocket-lens , are all he needs to begin with . Mr . Geikie ' s is a nice , easy-flowing style , and in his hands even a dry boulder is invested with interest : —
We can easily believe , merely from looking at it as it lies on its clayey bed , that a long time must have elapsed between the time of its formation as part of a sandstone bed and the periods of its transportion . and striation by an iceberg . The sand of which it Is formed must have been washed down by currents , and other sediment would settle down over it . It would take somo time to acquire its present hardness and solidity , -while in long , subsequent times , after being broken up and
well rounded by breaker or current action , it may have lain on some old coast-line for centuries before It was finally frozen into an ice-floe , and so freighted to s distance . But the stone , with all its stories of the olden time , can tell us nothing of this intervening period . It leads us from a dreary , frozen sea at once into a land of tropical luxuriance , and so , if -wo desire to know anything of the missing portion of the chronology , we must ecok it elsewhere .
It is just this inductive study of natural history which is so delightful . In Nature ' s page there arc neither hard names to scare us away , nor dry and dull descriptions to send us to sleep . If she interests us , she places the object itself in our hands , and then wo shall soon learn to find even ploasuro in mastering these hard names and perusing theso
-
-
Citation
-
Leader (1850-1860), Aug. 7, 1858, page 777, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/ldr_07081858/page/17/
-