1903- Obihiary. 193 



will be cherished and kept green by all who really knew him as the 

 good fellow he was. A little collecting tour in either Ireland or in 

 Wales with Bain, even in his older days, was an experience no naturalist 

 would ever be likely to forget, no matter what his own speciality might 

 be ; and although his eyesight somewhat failed him after his eightieth 

 5'^ear, yet he could detect and correctly diagnose a rare flowering plant, 

 moss, or fern to the last. He was never married. He died peacefully at 

 Holyhead on April 28th, at 2 o'clock p.m., and he was laid to rest near 

 the avenue of quaint old hawthorn trees in the Cemetery at Mount 

 Jerome, near Dublin, on Friday, May ist, beside his two brothers, 

 Robert and William Bain, James Fraser and Dr. J. T. Mackay, and also 

 near to other of his many old friends who had already crossed the bar. 



F. W. BURBIDGE. 



REVIEW. 



NATURE STUDY. 



My Nature Notebook, By E). Kay Robinson, author of "To-day 

 with Nature." I^ondon : Isbister & Co., lytd. Pp. 212. is. 6d. 



This little book is a reprint of the " Nature Notes" which appeared 

 in the Daily Graphic during 1902. The writer is a good observer, and 

 one cannot read through many of his pages without finding both informa- 

 tion and suggestion, though these are imparted in a somewhat random 

 fashion, and it is doubtful whether the volume quite rises to the level 

 claimed for it in the author's preface, of " a cursory record of one year 

 week by week." Some views advanced on the subject of migration are 

 scarcely in harmony with the results of recent inquiry. Mr. Robinson 

 maintains that " the wind is a constant factor, and a very important 

 factor," in accelerating and assisting the flight of migrants; thus — 



*' If the wind blows from the north only at the rate of fifty miles an 

 hour, the swift, flying sixty miles an hour, will have achieved a hundred 

 and ten miles ; while the Willow-wren, with thirty miles an hour, would 

 have flown eighty; and, of course, the stronger the wind the less would 

 be the proportionate difference." 



In fact, the stronger the wind, provided it blows in the right direction, 

 the greater, Mr. Robinson implies, will be the assistance rendered to 

 the migrant, and particularly to the migrant of weaker wing-power 

 Unfortunately for this theory, it is in'^calm, anti-cyclonic weather that 

 birds chiefly travel, and the mere direction of the wind, apart from its 

 strength, evidently— according to lighthouse observations- -affects them 

 very little. It would, however, be unfair to judge Mr. Robinson's general 

 reliability by an occasional faulty inference of this nature. On many of 

 the subjects on which he touches there is plenty of room for differences 

 of opinion ; but this does not detract from the zest with which his pages 

 may be read, and one has the feeling that the sketches are really 

 drawn from nature by a hand neither inexperienced nor unskilful. 



C. B. M. 



