21 FEBRUARY 1835, Page 20

One of the latest volumes of the Library of Entertaining

Know- ledge is devoted to the Faculties of Birds. Their modes of seeing, hearing, tasting, and touching, are first treated of; then their locomotive faculties, the way in which they walk and fly ; their migration and instinct follow; lastly, there is a chapter on the application of the subject to natural theology. The work is an amusing rather than an able or a complete compilation. A great many curious facts and anecdotes are brought together; there is a good deal of pleasant and gossipy disquisition, some anatomical exposition of the different organs which are spoken of, and some odds and ends of opinions taken from old authors, and which seem to show extensive reading in the black letter books of the naturalist ; but a scientific or masterly rationale of the subject it certainly is not. It is, however, what many will like better—an entertaining volume.