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Rh felicity, and literary wealth which no mere culture could ever attain; he is a genius of a rare and classic kind. A ‘Morning in the Zoo’ with such. a companion will be found to have the charm of Thoreau without his vanity; the humor of Lamb, never labored or attenuated into wire-drawn conceits.” — London Standard.

“Mr. Phil. Robinson is an entertaining writer: he is genial and humorous, with a knack of saying things in the manner of (Charles Lamb. … He has undoubtedly a great liking for animals, special knowledge of their works and ways, of their homes and haunts, and writes about them not in the style of a natural history, but with the freedom and gracefulness of a novelist or humorist. This book is well fitted to wile away the hours which can be stolen from absorbing work. The author chats pleasantly and charmingly about animals, with frequent digressions, which sometimes are almost startling enough to suggest an inquiry as to what possible relation the digression has with the book; and yet, after all, the digression is as entertaining as the book proper. … We have but dipped into this thoroughly interesting and very admirable book, which tells us a very great deal about all kinds of animals from all parts of the world, and from its seas and rivers. It is full of real poetry of feeling, and contains much that philosophers and divines may ponder with exceeding advantage, and all sorts of readers will peruse with intense interest. We can scarcely give the book higher praise than this, and all this it richly deserves.” — The London Literary World.

“Even so admirable and delightful a writer as Mr. Phil. Robinson cannot afford to despise that incalculable element in human affairs which goes by the name of luck; and he may be congratulated upon the fact that his latest volume comes under the notice of the reading world at a moment when that world has been brought into a condition of pecuHar and beautiful preparedness for its reception. When Jumbo is the hero of the hour, and when, in body or in mind, millions of our countrymen, countrywomen, and country children, have been making pilgrimages to his shrine in Regent’s Park, the record of ‘Mornings at the Zoo,’ can hardly fail to exercise a powerful if melancholy fascination; and when the recorder is a man like Mr Phil. Robinson the fascination is one that can amply justify itself to itself or to the world, and is not to be regarded as a mere spring frenzy or midsummer madness. … He is not a joke manufacturer. When the joke comes it is welcome, all the more welcome for coming spontaneously: and when it stays away, its place can easily be filled by some little tit-bit of recent scientific speculation or result of personal observation of the manners and customs of Mr. Robinson’s brute friends. For ‘Noah’s Ark’ has something more than mere humor to recommend it. The humor is, in fact, but the mere decoration of a body of knowledge; and the man with no more sense of fun than a hippopotamus might read it with edification as a contribution to ‘natural’ as well as to ‘unnatural’ history. Artemus Ward proudly remarked of himself that he had ‘a very animal mind,’ and Mr. Phil. Robinson might with even better reason indulge in the same boast. He is a true lover of beasts, birds, and fishes; and because he is a true lover he is a keen observer, and because he is a keen observer he is a pleasant writer concerning the ways and the works — one might almost say the words — of the denizens of field and forest, of air and water. ‘If you would be generous,’ he says, in his brief postscript, ‘do not think me too much in earnest when I am serious, or altogether in fun because I jest;’ and one of the pleasantest features of this pleasant work is that it does not tire us by subjecting the mind to the fatigue of maintaining one attitude too long, but, like a cunningly constructed arm-chair, enables us to be comfortable in a dozen consecutive positions. Some good books can be recommended to this person or to that; they resemble the square or the round peg which adapts itself admirably to the square or round hole. But ‘Noah’s Ark,’ if the metaphor be not too undignified, is like the ‘self-fitting candle’ which is at home in any receptacle. It is — to drop metaphor — a book for everybody.” — The Overland Mail.