s for the banishment of _Hanoverian_ rats
(Mr W. never allows this voracious intruder a British denizenship) in
Yorkshire, and for averting the projected banishment of the rooks in
Scotland. Among the amusing _omniun gatherum_ intermingled with the
valuable ornithological information in the present volume, we find
dissertations on the gigantic raspberries, now, alas! no more produced in
the ruined garden of Walton Hall--on the evils of tight shoes, tight
lacing, and stiff cravats--on the natural history of that extinct-by-law
variety of the human species called the chimney sweeper--and last, not
least, on that of the author himself, in the continuation of his unique
autobiography; and we rejoice to find him, though now close upon his grand
climacteric, still able to climb a tree by the aid of toes which have
never been cramped by tight shoes, with all the vigour, if not all the
agility, of his lusty youth, breathing hostility against no living
creature except Mr Swainson and Sir Robert Peel--the little love he
already bore to the latter for framing the oath of abjuration for
Catholics[9] not being greatly augmented by the imposition of the
income-tax--and still maintaining in Walton Park an inviolable asylum for
crows, hawks, owls, and all the generally proscribed tribes of the
feathered race.

The continuation of the autobiography is taken up from the publication of
the first volume of essays in 1837, and consists chiefly of the narrative
of adventures by land and perils by sea, in an expedition with his family,
by the route of Holland and the Rhine, to the sunny shores of Italy. But
the intervening period was not without incidents worthy of record. By a
judicious system of pavement joined with Roman cement, and drains secured
at the mouths by iron grates, "Charles Waterton, in the year of grace
1839, effectually cleared the premises at Walton Hall of every Hanoverian
rat, young and old ... and if I were to offer L.20 sterling money for the
capture of a single individual, in or about any part of the premises, not
one could be procured." Not long after this memorable achievement, a case
of hydrophobia in Nottingham promised to afford him an opportunity of
trying the virtues of the famous _Wourali_ poison, as a cure for this
dreadful and hitherto unconquerable malady. The difficulties and dangers
encountered in the search for this potent narcotic through the wilds of
Guiana, and the subsequent experiments on the ass _Wour