178 The Field Naturalist's Quarterly May 



' animal' is applied to any 'organised being endowed with sensation and 

 power of voluntary motion,' including, of course, man, beasts, birds, 

 reptiles, fishes, and insects, the word ' beast ' is applied to four-footed, 

 or rather four-limbed, animals only, as distinguished from man, birds, 

 reptiles, &c, and the word ' mammal ' is confined to those animals 

 which suckle their young." Now, without in any way subscribing to 

 the definition of an animal which is here chosen,— for many inverte- 

 brates are fixed in position, — one would naturally expect the author to 

 use the word "animal" in the sense which he himself indicates. How- 

 ever, on p. 127, referring to the long neck of the giraffe, he says, " It 

 has only exactly the same number of bones in it that the neck of a man 

 or any other animal has — viz., seven." Here the word " animal " is 

 obviously " used indiscriminately " in the sense of " mammal " by the 

 writer ; nor do we think there is any great harm in that, — in a popular 

 book, — were it not that such usage is expressly disparaged in the be- 

 ginning. It is this curious mixture of exactitude and slackness of ex- 

 pression which we consider the greatest fault in the book. One other 

 feature has somewhat detracted from the pleasure of reading the book 

 — and it is a pleasure in spite of the faults — namely, the inclusion of so 

 many sentences in quotation marks without any indication of the source 

 from which they are taken. 



Mr Gambier Bolton has — wisely, we think, for the purposes of this 

 work — dealt chiefly with the curiosities of animal life, — zoological 

 puzzles, as he terms them in one chapter, — which give him the oppor- 

 tunity of explaining many things that animal lovers often ask about. 

 The explanations of these puzzles are generally sound, and this is one of 

 the most interesting sections. The most amusing chapter is that in 

 which the author describes his experiments on a number of animals in 

 the Zoo with various musical instruments, amongst which he employed 

 the bagpipes. The results of the different sounds on various animals 

 are most entertainingly described, and the experiment must have pro- 

 vided the author with a most enjoyable afternoon. 



An excellent chapter, too, is that on Some Four-handed Folk, in 

 which Mr Bolton tells of his successful efforts to obtain the photos of 

 the hanuman monkeys, and the habits of these animals in their native 

 haunts. Amongst the other rarities of bird and beast life the curious 

 New Zealand running birds find a place, the photos of the apteryx being 

 particularly good, as also is one of a moa skeleton — that immense ex- 

 tinct bird which the Maories used to slaughter in numbers, probably for 

 food at their gatherings, as numbers of skeletons have been found in one 

 spot quite recently. 



We must not omit to mention the excellent account of the animals of 

 the late Queen as well as those of his Majesty. The royal family are 

 all great lovers of birds and beasts, and our author tells us much of 

 interest concerning their favourites. 



The book is well worth the price, if only for the illustrations ; but it 

 is, in addition, very readable, and contains much information gathered 

 from many sources in many climes. 



