REVIEW. 661 



clay nests and their manner of constructing and stocking them that it is often easy 

 for one who knows anything of them to identify them ; but to one who has not 

 this knowledge a most interesting and valuable chapter becomes like a museum 

 without labels. 



Besides this, the descriptions themselves are often vitiated by the author's 

 ignorance of what he is writing about. Referring to a "loudly humming hawk- 

 moth" which hovers over groups of canes, he says that it is probably the 

 mature representative of a chrysalis which inhabits chambers built out of 

 the pinnae of the leaves rolled up, in which it makes a furious rattling 

 when disturbed. The description, which is very well done, exactly fits the 

 chrysalis of a gigantic Hesperiicl butterfly, but is ludicrously inapplicable to any 

 known hawkmoth. Again, recalling the old-fashioned bungalows of his ' griffin- 

 hood,' with their white-washed walls, he says that the larvae of clothes-moths 

 walked about everywhere in " little ambulatory coffins." The curious insect 

 he means is well known, but it has nothing to do with clothes. It seems to 

 feed on the minute lichens that grow on damp walls. These mistakes, of 

 which we could multiply examples, are perhaps trivial in themselves, but they 

 make it impossible to accept without reserve some of the interesting and original 

 observations with which the book abounds. And it must be added that the style 

 occasionally rises into a strain of semi-humorous vehemence which leaves 

 the reader in doubt whether he is listening to fact or fable. Witness the 

 following extract from a long rhapsody on the " autumnal concerts " of jubi- 

 lant, or lovelorn, insects : — " Nothing short of actual auditory experience can 

 serve to give any just idea of the horrors of the din ; no amount of use to the 

 hubbub of frogs, cicadas and common crickets which fills the air of nights in 

 moist, tropical regions, can lead to an indifferent tolerance for such a screech- 

 ing, thrilling, ear-splitting, nerve-rending clamour. When in full force it is 

 enough to upset the balance of the soundest nervous apparatus, and to people 

 of irritable temperament it makes for madness." We have heard of an Irish- 

 man on the subordinate staff of an Indian Railway, who lay in wait, with 

 his gun, for a monster bull-frog, because it had taken possession of a puddle 

 in front of his house and kept shouting, " You're dronk, You're dronk," but 

 to any Anglo-Indian blessed with the instincts of a naturalist we imagine 

 that the chorus of joyous voices which greet rain after dust and heat rank 

 among the pleasures, not the pains, of life in the tropics. 



Perhaps it is not fair to criticise in this spirit a work which, as we have 

 already said, makes no claim to be scientific. From another and no doubt the 

 right point of view, as a random record of reminiscences, some bright, some 

 dark, but all beautiful now in the sunset tints of the day that is past we find 

 it wholly delightful. The author enjoys a most enviable sensitiveness to the 

 influences of nature and a power of vivid description that has made his note- 

 book a cinematograph by means of which he leads the days and nights 

 of the forever bygone in procession before our eyes. Many a retired Anglo- 

 Indian, reading the concluding chapters on the seasons, will live again a happy 

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