REVIEWS 179 



branches of science ; its authors are to be congratulated on having struck out 

 novel and useful lines in a department of economic science which has a tendency 

 to be conventional. 



L. B. 



Horses. By Roger Pocock. With an Introduction by Prof. J. Cossar Ewart, 

 F.R.S. [Pp. x + 252.] (London : John Murray, 1917. Price 5^. net.) 



The politician traces the development of man in the history of parliaments and 

 wars, the architect reads man as he expresses himself in brick and stone, and the 

 artist builds up his estimate from a knowledge of man's productions in the realm 

 of art ; but to Roger Pocock, the frontiersman, the history of the world is the 

 history of the horse, with man as an adjunct. The effect is as interesting as it is 

 unusual. His book on this subject begins with a description of the origin of the 

 horse and the early civilisation of man, which is based evidently on the author's 

 reading, and has, therefore, a tendency to dullness ; but when he abandons his 

 erudition and plunges into his own wide experiences of equestrian travel the 

 matter is vivid and striking, and he succeeds in imparting to his reader some of 

 his all-absorbing love for his favourite animal. The account treats of the horse 

 from all points of view, his usefulness for transport, travel, pleasure, sport and 

 war ; and the information is seasoned, not only with excellent descriptions of the 

 country through which the author has passed, but with flashes of a fresh and 

 caustic wit that is never for a moment tainted with malice ; and his writing dis- 

 closes, quite unconsciously, the strength, sweetness, and sympathy of his own 

 character. Not the least important chapter is that on the " soldier horse," 

 wherein he criticises strongly the folly of the British War Office in throwing on to 

 the field of battle a strain of horses raised exclusively for the exigencies of the 

 hunting-field, and consequently lacking the staying power and mobility required 

 for the purposes of war. He shows also how the equipment of both horse and 

 rider and the training of the latter wofully need the application of a little common 

 sense. These criticisms are not born of the conceit of his own opinion, for he 

 brings forward specific instances of ignorance, of which the most notable is the 

 loss, during the Boer War, of a large number of horses within a fortnight, due to 

 the fact that the officer in charge insisted on applying stable treatment to animals 

 which had to live in the open without a stable. The interest of the book is not 

 diminished by the circumstance that the author has written it in the intervals of 

 his duties at the front in the present war. 



ANTHROPOLOGY 



Arboreal Man. By F. Wood Jones, M.B., D.Sc. [Pp. x + 230.] (London : 

 Edward Arnold, 19 16. Price &s. 6d. net.) 



Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is commonly much less interesting. This 

 must be so whenever it is presented to us in a dishevelled state, with the excuse 

 that " Truth needs no adornment." This seems to have been the point of view 

 adopted by Dr. Wood Jones when he decided to give us this book on arboreal 

 man. He tells his readers, in his Preface, that he is fully aware of the fact that 

 his pages are marred by literary defects, and " lacking in proper literary sequence." 

 But these blemishes, he explains, are inseparable from the origin of his book, 

 which is formed out of the material of certain Arris & Gale Lectures, delivered in 

 the Theatre of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, during the years 191 5 

 and 191 6. For some reason, not clearly apparent, the author has re-issued these 



