ch envelops the most prosaic details in
an atmosphere of refinement and grace.

_Methods of Study in Natural History_. By L. AGASSIZ. Boston:
Ticknor & Fields. 12mo.

A work from the scientific storehouse of Professor Agassiz needs only to
have attention called to its existence to command universal welcome. The
readers of the "Atlantic" are already in some measure familiar with its
contents, being a reprint of a series of papers published in this
journal; but they will be read again with double satisfaction in this
continuous form. The avowed purpose is "to give some general hints to
young students as to the methods by which scientific truth has been
reached."

There are many lovers of Nature, and many students of Nature; but there
are very few whom we may term philosophers of Nature. In other words,
there are those who are charmed with the external world, its landscapes,
its beauteous forms and tints, and all its various adaptations to
fascinate the senses,--and those who delight in deciphering and
describing all the details of individual objects, and their wonderful
fitness to the role they have severally or unitedly to play; and there
is the man who, endowed with all this, seeks to go still farther, and
from myriads of observations to deduce great general truths. He is the
philosopher.

When Agassiz arrived in this country, there were many good observers of
Nature here, and many who had accumulated a large store of facts. Each
one had been working in his own way, almost alone, scarcely knowing the
ultimate aims of scientific research, much less knowing how to arrive at
them. To him, more than to any other person, zooelogists in this country
are indebted for showing them how to work, and for presenting to them a
plan to be worked out, with processes and means by which this is to be
done. And now he designs to diffuse these high aims and methods
throughout the community. As he says, "The time has come when scientific
truth must cease to be the property of the few, when it must be woven
into the common life of the world." Of all men, he is the one to gain
the ear and understanding of the public on such matters, and to command
the recognition of his conclusions. His faculty of simplifying great
principles, and of clothing them in such language and with such
illustrations as to render them intelligible and attractive to the
uninstructed, is one of Professor Agassiz's most rare characteristics.
In these chapters he