I know of nothing more likely to stimulate the mind to healthy exertion, and take it out of the immediate track of common interests and pleasures, the monotony of which is so oppressive, than the study of natural history in some of its least explored fields, especially its extraordinary development in connection with the waters of the ocean. And yet, how few there are who seek that charming mode of dissipating the dreary monotony of social life, such as it is made by the routine of fashion or habit! A popular love of natural history, even in its best known divisions, is, in fact, of quite recent growth. Indeed, the very existence of such a science has been, till recently, altogether ignored by our great national seats of learning. The earnest investigators, who have done so much to lay bare its wonders, were either openly ridiculed, or treated with but small respect—as useless dreamers upon very small and insignificant matters. The very names of such true labourers in the mine of science as our glorious old naturalist Ray, or his follower Pulteney, or the indefatigable Ellis, the first detector of the true nature of Zoöphytes, who measured pens with the giant Linnæus, received no academic honour; and those of their undiscouraged successors have been rarely heard, either in our universities or among our general public, till the vast discoveries of geology and other allied branches of science, in our own times, have at last aroused attention to their importance. Any popular knowledge of that branch of natural history which especially concerns our seas and shores, is indeed of still more recent date. The subject, in fact, is but even now beginning to develop itself beneath the pens of an enterprising band of marine naturalists, with such leaders as Johnston, Harvey, John Edward Gray, the indefatigable Gosse, and the revered shade of the lamented Forbes at their head. A truly popular knowledge even of those more accessible regions of our woods and fields, is but little more ancient; for, till Gilbert White had made the story of such knowledge as attractive as romance, in his “Natural History of Selborne,” few guessed what an arena of ever new interests and discoveries it presented.