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1897] 
SOME NEW BOOKS 
“TERRA AUSTRALIS INCOGNITA ” 
Tue NATURALIST IN AUSTRALIA. By W. Saville-Kent. 4to., pp. xv. 302. Tllus- 
trated by 50 full page collotypes, 9 coloured plates by Keulemans and other artists, 
and over 100 illustrations in the text. London: Chapman & Hall. 1897, 
Price, £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 Reef 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 fire 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 aut-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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