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SOME NEW BOOKS 



" Terra Australis Incognita " 



The Naturalist ix Australia. By W. Saville-Kent. 4to., pp. xv. 30'2. Illus- 

 trated by 50 full page collotypes, 9 coloured plates by Keulemaus and other artists, 

 and over 100 illustrations in the text. Loudon : Chapman & Hall. 1897. 

 Trice, £3, 3s. 



Naturalists of all classes, and a good many other people besides, 

 including the inhabitants of the nursery, should be grateful to Mr 

 Saville-Kent for producing such a magnificent picture book of the 

 natural history of the most interesting and least known region of the 

 earth, and for pouring out such a wealth of observation and enter- 

 taining anecdote as are to be found in his latest volume. We can 

 attempt no summary of so discursive a work, but may perhaps give 

 some idea of it by extracting a few of the new bits of information that 

 it contains. The book is in some sense supplementary to Mr Saville- 

 Kent's former fine volume on the Great Barrier Beef of Australia, 

 reviewed in Natural Science for June 1893 (vol. ii., pp. 453-460), and 

 deals chiefly, though by no means exclusively, with Western Australia, 

 about which little has heretofore been written from the naturalist's 

 point of view. 



In chapter i. we are introduced to various aborigines of Western 

 Australia, where they have been less exposed to the undermining in- 

 fluences of civilisation than in the more settled colonies. An advantage 

 of civilisation, however, from the native's point of view, is the introduc- 

 tion of glass, whether in the form of bottles or telegraph insulators, from 

 which wonderfully fine spear heads are manufactured, not by blows 

 nor by breaking off with a bone, but by pressure with a hard stone or, 

 preferably, a piece of iron. The frictional methods of kindling fire 

 are described, but the author adds that they are seldom used — not 

 because of the introduction of lucifer matches, but because it is the 

 duty of the women to maintain the lire unquenched, and during 

 migrations to carry lighted firesticks with them. This casts a light on 

 the origin of the Vestal Virgins of antiquity. 



A good deal has been written about the spurs on the hind feet of 

 the duck-billed platypus. Mr Saville-Kent suggests that they are 

 claspers used by the male (to whom they are confined) for the retention 

 of the slippery female. Similar spurs are found in the male echidna, 

 and in each case they are connected with a gland on. the back part of 

 the thigh. The echidna, also known as the spiny ant-eater, does not, 

 it appears, eat ants at all — that is to say, not adult ants, but it breaks 

 open the ant-hills and devours the nymphs, larvae, and pupae. 



Another error common to the text books, is the representation of 

 phalangers flying from tree to tree in a horizontal position or with the 

 head lower than the rest of the body. The truth, according to our 

 author, is that the head and shoulders are always kept at the highest 

 level, with the forearms outstretched ready to grasp the first object 



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