624 



NATURE 



[January 13, 1921 



the body of the eater. But we know that all food 

 is completely broken up in digestion into con- 

 stituents which are the same for all kinds of flesh, 

 unless there be something present in minute quan- 

 tity not yet discovered. But this is a very un- 

 likely possibility, and has no evidence in its 

 favour. There seems, then, to be no justification 

 for the statement. 



The book abounds in illuminating similes. As 

 an example, one might take the comparison of 

 enzymes or catalysts to the tools with which the 

 cell works, and the nucleus to the tool-room ; but 

 the latter is more hypothetical. 



What has been said will serve to show how 

 great is the variety of subjects discussed ; but 

 a meagre impression has been given of the in- 

 teresting way in which they are treated. Every- 

 one who cares to put his ideas in order is strongly 

 advised to read the book. 



The author deserves our gratitude for providing 

 an index. This is not always to be found even 

 in works of a more special nature. 



W. M. Bayliss. 



Life in the Misty Islands. 



The Land oj the Hills and the Glens : Wild Life 

 in lona and the Inner Hebrides. By Seton 

 Gordon. Pp. xii + 223. (London: Cassell and 

 Co., Ltd., 1920.) Price 15J. net. 



THIS beautiful book, fine in temper, style, and 

 illustrations, discloses something of the 

 charm of the Inner Hebrides, " the Land of the 

 Hills and the Glens and the Heroes." Mr. Seton 

 Gordon is a keen ornithologist and a master- 

 photographer, but he is much more — a genuine 

 lover of wild Nature. His pictures are at once 

 realistic and sympathetic. In the early morning, 

 on the top of Ben Nevis, he notices the meadow 

 pipit picking little insects off the frozen surface 

 of the snow, but he leaves the main impression 

 salient — a vast sea of mist, changing from cold 

 grey to rose, from amid which the tops of the 

 highest hills stand out clear and sharp, all the rest 

 of the land deeply submerged. 



In a small glen "in the keeping of the great 

 hills " a pair of golden eagles make their nest on 

 one of the veteran birch trees. Mr. Seton Gordon 

 had the good fortune to witness the first flight of 

 the two eaglets, and gives us a fine description. 

 He notices that when two are reared, one is 

 always a cock and the other a hen. As the two 

 eggs we have seen have usually been slightly dif- 

 ferent in colour, we wonder if this is an index of 

 the future sex. Perhaps this is an old specula- 

 tion. The scene changes to pne of the misty 

 islands when there is a first hint (in February) of 

 NO. 2672, VOL. 106] 



the approach of spring — ravens somersault, 

 oyster-catchers stand in the sun, companies of 

 turnstones flit restlessly about, and many barnacle- 

 geese rise up from their feeding. It is suggested 

 in passing that the quaint story of the origin of 

 these barnacle-geese from barnacles may have had 

 something to do with the fact that the nesting site 

 —in inaccessible districts of the High North — was 

 until recently quite unknown. About the time 

 the barnacle-geese return to the lone island after 

 summering in the North, the baby grey seals are 

 in possession, and a visit to the wild nursery in the 

 first week in November enabled the author to 

 make some interesting observations and to take 

 some first-class photographs. 



Many of us have had experience of the sea that 

 surges round Ardnamurchan — "The Point of the 

 Ocean " — but few have set foot on its weather- 

 beaten surface. Though on the mainland of Scot- 

 land, it is scarcely accessible except from the Island 

 of Mull. "On its cliffs the golden eagle has its 

 home, and in former times the erne or sea eagle 

 was wont to nest on its inaccessible ledges. On 

 quiet days of early spring ravens sail and tumble 

 above its rocks, and one may hear the shrill, 

 mournful cry of the buzzard as she leaves her 

 eyrie. Near by is the haunt of the wild cat, now 

 a fast vanishing species in the Highlands, and as 

 early as February she has been known to produce 

 her young in the rocky cairns above the reach 

 of the waves." On one of the low islands far to 

 the west of this the Arctic skuas arrive from the 

 south about the end of May. They are almost 

 unique in their habit of feigning injury in order 

 to deceive the intruder while the eggs are freshly 

 laid. Many birds do this later on. From observa- 

 tions at his "hide" Mr. Seton Gordon satisfied 

 himself that the skua, at any rate, does not count 

 more than one. One of the Gaelic names for the 

 skua means " squeezer " in allusion to the habit 

 of extorting fish from other birds, and it is noted 

 that "even a bird of such command of flight as 

 the tern very rarely indeed succeeds in getting 

 away from a skua — that is to say, with its fish 

 still in its possession." 



We are tempted to linger over the fascinating 

 pictures — the " big glen " in Mull, with one 

 stream flowing east and another west, with its 

 ravens and buzzards and deer ; the Hill of the 

 Two Winds rising steeply from the Sound, where 

 the sparse ptarmigan have such a keen struggle 

 for existence (because of the hungry eggs of many 

 gulls and crows) that the cock birds are silent 

 during the nesting season, and the hens are very 

 easily frightened from their nests ; the snapshots 

 of the densely peopled sea-pool through every 

 month of the year ; the deep lochan in a crater- 



