The Sun.
London, England, 1863-10-02 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

Our Garden Friends and Foes. By the Rev. J. G.
Wood. One vol., pp. 438. Routledge and Co.
Perhaps no volume ever appeared more oppor-
tunely than this guide to Oar Friends and Foes in
Garden and Greenhouse. It comes forth in the very
midst of the discussions now rife in regard to Bird
Murder. It is the work of one known not only as
an eminent proficient, but also as a distinguished
and recognised authority in regard to the study of
Natural History. The rev. author is entitled already
to the very notable distinction among naturalists
of having done more in his time towards the pupas
lancing of the science, towards the familiaris-
ing of his fellow-countrymen with a knowledge
of the fauna and flora of all climates, but more
particularly of the fauna and flora of the
United Kingdom, than any other individual that
could be mentioned. A yet more profound, be-
cause a far more practised and experienced natu-
ralist, might of course be recognised in the venerable
squire of Walton Hall, that good and gifted Charles
Waterton, who has long since taken his place
among the greatest masters of the twin studies of
zoology and ornithology. But while eminent him-
self as a cultivator of both those sciences, and
while adding to his wide and ripe, to his perpetually
widening and ripening, scholarship, both as a zoolo-
gist and as an ornithologist, an intimacy quite
as remarkable in its way with the other
branches or divisions of Natural History,
with botany and entomology for example, we may
pretty confidently repeat in other and more emphatic
words, what we have just now remarked in regard
to the Rev. S. G. Wood's labours (of love) in popu-
larizing the study of Natural History, that in that
one respect he is at this moment quite unrivalled.
Upon the same familiar shelf where stands our well-
thumbed copy of the Rev. Gilbert White's Natural
History of Selborne, we have long had. reason to
place side by side with that beloved book, the Rev.
J. G. Wood's "Common Objects of the Seashore."
Supplementing the great encyclossmdic work of
Buffon, comes, we also remark, our author's
popular Natural History illustrated. Several
other volumes of a less comprehensive ma-
ture he has besides that issued from the press :
and now—as the latest, and certainly also as the
most happily timed of all his productions in this
way—he gives us this very complete and welcome
manual. A manual, it will be found to be,
by the aid of which anyone may readily
and infallibly distinguish between those creatures
swarming around us, whether bird or insect, in our
gardens, in our greenhouses, in the very bow-pots
in our windows, upon our plots of grass, and in our
boxes of mignionette ! Knowing at once, in regard
to each and all of them, how it is, they ought in
justice and in truth to be regarded and dealt
with, namely, whether as Friends or as Foes.
How essential some reliable guide in this direc-
tion, in drawing precisely this very distinc-
tion, has become, the very controversy already
referred to in regard to the Little Birds and
their Murderers, has within the last few weeks
tended signally and conclusively to demon-
strate. And here, off-hand, in the very nick of
time, as it were, here, in these amusing and in-
structive pages by the Rev. J. G. Wood, we have
the very guide-book, wanted, placed in our hands.
It is the first book of the kind, we believe,
that has ever yet made its appearance. It is the
very first work, that is to say, in which the line of
division has been carefullyand systematically drawn,
separating, henceforth, the good from the bad, our
friends and our foes, among the insect and bird
frequenters, or inhabitants, of our Gardens and
Greenhouses, Not only has this been done, as we
have said, carefully and systematically in the six-
and-twenty chapters into which this goodly volume
of 438 pages will be found subdivided, but—scat-
tered through the letter-press descriptions of the
birds and insects, and with these also a variety of
little animals as familiar to the English naturalist
as the lizard, the mole, the weazle, and the hedge-
hog—the author supplies his reader (in reference to
each creature as it runs, flies, or creeps upon the
page to be mentioned) with effectual and always
very simple directions for the encouraging of the
Friends, and the extermination of the Foes of our
Gardens, our Flowers, and our Fruit. How essen-
tial these directions and these stores of information
upon such homely matters, have become, may only
too readily, we 'might add only toe painfully,
be illustrated. Take the little titmouse, for ex-
ample, and observe in the first place how it is re-
garded (and treated), and in the next place how
it ought to be regarded (and treated). Vulgarly
it is looked upon as a very pest to the
orchard. Flitting hither and thither among the
branches of a fruit tree, observed there to be snap-
ping off the tender buds and twigs, nibbling at
them when snapped off, and then scattering them
wilfully away upon the ground below, as if in very
wantonness of destruction, it is at once looked upon
by any ignorant person watching its proceedings
as one of the worst foes of the gardener any where
to be found in the whole range of ornithology.
The truth being all the while that the little tit-
mouse is just exactly the reverse, is one of the very
best of all the feathered friends of that same
grumbling gardener! The titmouse keeping down
by its proceedings above described those swarms of
insects that unless destroyed by some such effectual
means must as Mr. Wood expresses it (in no way
with over emphasis) "devastate our crops:and wither
up our flowers." The singular delusion prevalent
in regard to that wonderful little insect called
absurdly the Earwig (that name being simply a
corruption of Earwing, from the exquisite wing of
the insect resembling when spread open fan-wise the
outline of the human ear), the extraordinary delu.
sion prevalent in regard to the Earwig, prevalent
not only in England but far and wide in most of the
countries of Continental:Europe, namely, that it can
creep into the ear, penetrate to the brain, and drive
its wretched victim through unutterable agonies
into a delirium of ;madness—this preposterous
and ridiculous delusion in regard to the earwig
seems of itself to indicate how much information of
precisely the kind contained in this bode of Mr.
Wood's is really required even among our educated
population. As demonstrative of the prevalence of
this idle fancy in regard to the earwig not only in
this country hut abroad, it is only necessary to re-
call to mind the fact that while it is designated
(from the verbal corruption above mentioned) an
Earwig in England, in France it is called Pcrce-
°reale, in Germany Ohren-wurn, and in Sweden
Ohren-wetel. Profusely sprinkled through the work,
• aiding the writer considerably even in the instance
of his most vivid descriptions, are upwards of two
hundred illustrations by' T. W. Wood, by Smith, and
by Coleman, many of them, particularly all those
presenting to us the effigies of the larval as well
as of the perfect forms of the insects men-
tioned in the work, being of the actual size
of life ! 'Whenever the professional gardener
or the amateur florist may henceforth be in
any doubt whatever as to a discrimination
between his Garden Friends and Foes—with this
goodly book at hand, his doubts may be at once and
quite conclusively dissipated. The caterpillar, the
slug, the snail, the woodlouse, the millipede, the
grub, the earthworm : here he may learn how best to
be rid of them. Frog and newt, gnat and spider,
cabbage-fly and rose-hopper, wasp and glowworm
—our ant hor will tell him here, promptly and
pleasantly, by a very few words, and often by an
entertaining anecdote, how each of them ought to
be regarded. Bullfinch and goldfinch, thrush and
blackbird, wren and starling, owl and robin, sparrow
and chaffinch—he tells all about them, the good
and the bad quite dispassionately. To the lady in
• her conservatory, to the market gardener among
his vegetables, to the farmer in his orchard, to the
suburban florist emoug his dahlias and carnations,
Air. Wood's charming volume will prove at all times
end seasone as welcome as flowers in i Tay cr apples
in October,