i895. SOME NEW BOOKS. 205 



ments of land necessary for the incursion and retrogression of sea- 

 water must have taken place, is quite sufficient, he thinks, to have 

 driven a large proportion of the then existing populations to hills and 

 mountains as places of refuge ; from which centres those that 

 survived proceeded in time to re-people the low-lands, and to be the 

 source of traditional legends of the great event. 



Of course, Dr, Prestwich takes cognisance of only such purely 

 natural features and incidents as are mentioned in the Hebrew and 

 Chaldean legends of the "Deluge," when he refers to these in con- 

 nection with his subject. He does not find it necessary to allude to 

 other legends ; and he leaves it for others to trace the origin of such 

 legends, whether in distant parts of the earth or nearer home. 



This little book of well-digested knowledge will certainly pro- 

 duce good results towards a clearing away of old-fashioned, fanciful, 

 mystical, and non-natural ideas about any so-called " Universal 

 Deluge." It gives a good geological standpoint for the consideration 

 of a diluvial catastrophe, of limited extent, in South-European, and 

 probably West-Asiatic, regions, which must have occurred since 

 Man began to inhabit this part of the World. 



T. Rupert Jones. 



The Life of the Broads. 



Birds, Beasts, and Fishes of the Norfolk Broadland. By P. H. Emerson. 

 Illustrated with sixty-eight photographs, by T. A. Cotton. 8vo. Pp. i.-xix., 

 1-396. London : David Nutt. Price 15s. 



The Eastern counties are so famous for the visits which they receive 

 from rare birds, that we turned with an unusually keen anticipation 

 of enjoyment to the neat and attractive volume now before us. In- 

 deed, the prospectus of the work promised a large amount of novel 

 information, though we cannot discover that the promise has been 

 fulfilled. Mr. Emerson comes before us in the role of a new writer 

 on natural history, a capacity in which his name will of course be 

 strange to ornithologists. He appears to aspire to belong to that 

 modern school of writers of which Mr. Warde Fowler and the Son 

 of the Marshes are the best known exponents. These gentlemen 

 write for the many, rather than for the scientific few, and their lack 

 of profound originality is much more than compensated for by the 

 rich eloquence in which their finest thoughts are clothed. It would 

 be difficult to over-estimate the importance of these cultured and 

 aesthetic writers, who bring before us the sights and sounds of 

 Nature in graceful and polished periods. Mr. Emerson's writings 

 likewise possess the charm which is born of artistic perception. He 

 \s3.h\e to idealise the common facts of natural history which have come 

 under his notice, and there can be no doubt that, so far as a limited 

 experience carries him, he does his best to reproduce for us whatever 

 he has hitherto learnt in his field rambles. Before we proceed 

 further, it is only right to warn the reader that Mr. Emerson's 

 writing possesses one great defect. He is far too self-conscious. He 

 seems to be ever playing to the gallery, and anticipating the applause 

 of the gods. This unpleasant feature is accentuated by the censorious 

 tone which Mr. Emerson has found it necessary to adopt. At the first 

 start he falls foul of the work of the best avian artists in Great 

 Britain. " The monstrous and gaudy decorations of Selby, Gould, 

 Dresser, and the illustrations to Booth's ' Rough Notes,' " make our 

 experienced author " gasp for breath " ; albeit, they contain much of 

 the best work of such brilliant artists as Neale and Keulemans. 



