March 23, 1893] 



NATURE 



483 



€very day, nay, every hour ; that certain kinds of coal- 

 dust were perhaps less inflammable than others, and so on. 



Comparatively few have had the advantage of carefully 

 studying the coal-dust flame as well as the opportunity 

 of investigating the minutest details of a series of great 

 colliery explosions in the mines, immediately after their 

 occurrence. The foregoing arguments are therefore 

 perhaps to some extent excusable ; but they are none the 

 less the outcome of the imagination of their authors. 

 They are being pressed more and more feebly as time 

 goes on, and they are likely, we think, before many years 

 have passed, to vanish as absolutely as the so-called 

 *' outburst of gas " theory which for more than a genera- 

 tion was invariably quoted as the only possible means of 

 accounting for the kind of explosions to which we have 

 been drawing attention. 



The late Home Secretary, Mr. Matthews, was so much 

 impressed by the occurrence of great explosions one 

 after the other in dry and dusty mines, that he appointed 

 a Royal Commission on Coal-Dust in 1890. That Com- 

 mission has not yet issued its report, but the volume of 

 evidence taken before it, which has been lately published, 

 shows to what small proportions the opposition has 

 shrunk since the theory was first started. It is also 

 satisfactory to observe that the number of lives lost in 

 great explosions during the last ten years is only about 

 one half of the number lost during the previous ten 

 years. W. G. 



REVERIES OF A NATURALIST. 



Idle Days in Patagonia. By W. H. Hudson, C.M.Z.S., 

 Author of "The Naturalist in La Plata." (London: 

 Chapman and Hall, 1893.) 



THE title of this book well describes its contents ; but 

 Mr. Hudson has established so high a standard by 

 his previous work that the present volume has something 

 of the character of an anti-climax. In literary style, in 

 picturesque description, and in suggestive ideas and re- 

 flections there is no falling off ; but we miss the wealth of 

 original observation and ingenious speculation which 

 made "The Naturalist in La Plata" a masterpiece. 



Mr. Hudson was wrecked on the shores of Patagonia, 

 and had a weary tramp over the desert, of some thirty 

 miles, to reach the settlement on the Rio Negro. There, 

 and at some farms higher up the valley, he appears to 

 have spent a year or more, doing nothing but wandering 

 about on foot or on horseback, observing the habits and 

 peculiarities of the scanty fauna and flora, noting the 

 varied aspects of nature, and apparently thoroughly en- 

 joying day after day of dreamy idleness. He spent some 

 months at a house about seventy miles up the valley, 

 which was here about five miles v/ide ; and every morning 

 he rode away to the terrace or plateau, covered with grey 

 thorny scrub, and there found himself as completely 

 alone as if he were five hundred instead of only five 

 miles from civilisation. He says :— 



"'Not once, nor twice, nor thrice, but day after day I 

 returned to this solitude, going to it in the morning as if 

 to attend a festival, and leaving it only when hunger and 

 thirst and the westering sun compelled me. And yet I 

 had no object in going— no motive which could be put 



NO. I22(, VOL. 47] 



into words ; for although I carried a gun, there was 

 nothing to shoot— the shooting was all left behind in the 

 valley. Sometimes a dolichotis, starting up at my ap- 

 proach, flashed for one moment on my sight, to vanish 

 the next moment in the continuous thicket ; or a covey of 

 tinamous sprang rocket-like into the air, and fled away 

 with long wailing notes and loud whirr of wings ; or, on 

 some distant hillside a bright patch of yellow, of a deer 

 that was watching me, appeared and remained motion- 

 less for two or three minutes. But the animals were few, 

 and sometimes I would pass an entire day without seeing 

 one mammal, and perhaps not more than a dozen birds 

 of any size." 



There was nothing beautiful or even pleasing to be seen 

 in this dreary monotonous solitude, yet he felt a great 

 delight and satisfaction in it, which he imputes to the 

 ancestral savage nature that still exists in all of us, though 

 repressed and overlaid by civilisation and society. 



" It was elation of this kind, the feeling experienced on 

 going back to a mental condition we have outgrown, which 

 1 had in the Patagonian solitude \ for I had undoubtedly 

 gone back] and that state of intense watchfulness, or 

 alertness rather, with suspension of the higher intellec- 

 tual faculties, represented the mental state of the pure 

 savage." 



In the second chapter — " How I became an Idler " — we 

 are told of a still more disagreeable adventure than the 

 shipwreck. Mr. Hudson was going with a friend to a 

 farm eighty miles up the valley. On the way they stayed 

 a night at a deserted hut, and here he had the misfortune 

 accidentally to discharge a revolver bullet into his knee, 

 rendering it necessary for him to return to the settlement 

 to be cured, perhaps to save his life. His friend tied up 

 the wound as well as he could, and left him to get a cart 

 from the nearest house a good distance off". He was 

 absent a whole day, Mr. Hudson lying on his back on the 

 ground all the time. When his companion at length 

 returned with the cart, and lifted him up to put him into 

 it, a large and very poisonous snake moved from under his 

 cloak, where it had been lying close to his feet for many 

 hours. It glided away into a hole under the wall, and 

 Mr. Hudson rejoiced " that the secret deadly creature, 

 after lying all night with me, warming its chilly blood 

 with my warmth, went back unbruised to its den." 



This accident kept the author for some months in bed, 

 and for other months a convalescent unable to walk far ; 

 and thus the finest summer weather was wasted, and he 

 acquired those habits of the country and the people that 

 made him an idler, and prevented him from learning as 

 much of the animal and vegetable life of the country as, 

 under more favourable circumstances, he might have 

 done. Yet he gives us many interesting facts and dis- 

 cussions, and the chapter on " The War with Nature " 

 is one of these. This war begins when man introduces 

 domestic cattle, cultivates the soil, and destroys the 

 larger wild animals for food or sport. In doing this he 

 provides food of an attractive kind for many wild 

 creatures, and the war begins. Pumas devour his cattle ; 

 locusts destroy his grass or crops ; coots, ducks, geese, 

 or pigeons devour the grain as soon as sown, or feed 

 upon the young shoots, or upon the ripe wheat ready for 

 the harvest ; and thus the farmer is kept in a constant 

 state of activity and watchfulness, which really gives him 

 a beneficial excitement in what would otherwise be a most 



