May 



900J 



NA TURE 



The remaining three chapters of this work treat of 

 such subjects as substage fittings, coloured screens, and 

 the various subsidiary apparatus useful in high power 

 or "critical" photo-micrography. These particulars do 

 not bear the condensation that is necessitated by the 

 space allotted to this report, but are full of information 

 for the guidance of the photo-micrographic student and 

 will materially assist him in his work. A valuable feature 

 is included in the appendices, and is headed "25 common 

 faults in photo-micrography ; their causes and means of 

 cure"; by a reference to p. 152 every error that may 

 present itself in the beginner's work is described, the 

 reason for it given, and the remedy indicated. Added 

 at the end of the book are five plates of representative 

 work in photo-micrography, the work of the author, while 

 a copious index brings the work to a conclusion. 



GEORGE KINGSLETS LIFE AND WRITINGS. 



Notes on Sport and Travel. By George Henry Kings- 

 ley. With a memoir by his daughter, Mary H. 

 Kingsley. Pp. viii -I- 544. (London : Macmillan and 

 Co., Ltd., 1900.) 



THIS is a book, we venture to think, that most readers 

 will lay down with deep regret — regret that a very 

 talented writer, an acute observer, and an ardent sports- 

 man (in the best sense of the word) should have 

 bequeathed so little of his experiences to the world. 

 For George Kingsley, a member of a clever family (or, 

 as his biographer will have it, a member of a clever 

 generation of an ancient family), was evidently a man far 

 above the ordinary intellectual level, and enjoyed 

 unrivalled opportunities of adding to our store of know- 

 ledofe by travel in distant lands at a time when they were 

 still, to a great extent, populated by their native denizens 

 and unspoiled by the march of civilisation. Unfortu- 

 nately, however, he seems to have been devoid of those 

 regular and methodical habits of work by which alone 

 the results of a life of exploration and travel can be 

 properly recorded, and we have consequently to be 

 content with mere scraps and fragments of a vast store 

 of information. 



From such scraps and fragments as the editor, who is 

 to a great extent also the author, of the present volume 

 Tias been able to save from oblivion, we glean how keen an 

 observer and how true a lover of nature was Dr. Kingsley. 

 Whether among the coral-girt isles of the South Pacific, 

 when they were yet in great part fpee from the "beach- 

 comber," or on the prairies of the " wild west," at a time 

 when the bison were still to be numbered by hundreds, 

 if not by thousands, his descriptions of scenery and 

 animals are life-like pictures. 



The greater part of the account of the author's travels 

 is given in the memoir by his daughter, which occupies 

 more than a third of the whole volume, and is, in great 

 measure, in the form of letters or of extracts from the 

 same. And here we take the opportunity of expressing 

 our sense of the excellent manner in which Miss Kingsley 

 — herself a traveller and writer of world-wide repute — 

 has discharged what must evidently have been a task of 

 110 ordinary difficulty. 



Kingsley fin company with the late Lord Pembroke) 

 NO. 1592, VOL. 62] 



j visited the South Seas in the late "sixties"— a time 

 j when yachting in those latitudes had not come into 

 ! vogue; and such descriptions as he has left of the 

 1 natives and natural products only make us regret that 

 they were not fuller. Fish seem especially to have at- 

 i traded his attention; but when, he states that he dis- 

 believes the story of a Chaetodon ^ shooting water at a fly, 

 the editor diould have added that the only fish which 

 performs this feat is a species of Toxoies, whose southern 

 j range only extends to North Australia, so that it could 



not have come under the ken of the author. 

 I The travels in Canada and the United States were 

 j undertaken in company with Lord Dunraven, between 

 1870 and 1875 ; parts of them being described by the 

 latter in "The Great Divide." 



Of the various collected papers of Dr. Kingsley, 

 perhaps the most interesting to the naturalist is the one 

 entitled " Among the Sharks and Whales." Here the 

 author graphically describes, as an eye-witness, certain 

 encounters between the larger Cetaceans and smaller 

 members of the same order, together, perhaps, with other 

 denizens of the deep. We are told, for instance, how 

 some of these creatures, of thirty feet or so in length, 

 were seen to leap clean out of the water, and then to 

 fall with a sounding " smack " that could be heard half 

 a mile off. But whether the creatures in question were 

 attacking a whale, or leaping for mere fun, the author 

 was unable to determine. Neither could he say 

 definitely whether or no they were "killers." And he 

 seems, indeed, to be somewhat confused between " killers " 

 and "threshers" ; although, as to the sharks commonly 

 called by the latter name, he denies that they ever attack 

 whales, adding that he has never even known a shark of 

 any kind throw itself out of the water. R. L. 



OUR BOOK SHELF. 



J rr ligation and Drainajs^e, Principles and Practice of, 

 their C ultural Phases. By F. H. King, Professor of 

 Agricultural Physics in the University of Wisconsin, 

 author of "The Soil." The Rural Science Series. 

 Pp. xxi -f 502. (New York : The Macmillan Company 

 London : Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1899.) 

 The object of this book, as stated in its preface, is " to 

 present, in a broad yet specific way, the fundamental 

 principles which underlie the methods of culture by irri- 

 gation and drainage," and we may say that we consider 

 the author successfully does this. 



The introductory chapter treats of the importance of 

 water in cultivation, and in it a number of interesting ex- 

 periments on the amount of water absorbed by cereals 

 and other plants, and the weight of dry matter produced 

 are described, from which it appears that with cereals the 

 amount of water used varies from about 300 to 500 lbs. 

 per pound of dry matter produced. The general result of 

 these experiments is considered to show " that well- 

 drained lands in Wisconsin, and in other countries having 

 similar climatic conditions, are not .supplied naturally 

 with as much water during the growing season as most 

 crops are capable of utilising, and hence that all methods 

 of tillage which are wasteful of soil moisture detract by so 

 much from the yield per acre." 



1 The editor avows a difficulty in deciphering some of the MS. which 

 came into her hands, and therefore suggests the possibility of a certain 

 amount of mis-spelling. Some naturalist friend would, however, doubtless 

 have corrected the following errors, viz.:— P. 6i, Cheiaiions for Chaetodons ; 

 p. 222, Haroldus for Harelda ; p. 414, Megaptera austrnlis for Balaena 

 australis ; p. 421, Ovulis and Mutras for Olives and Mitras ; and p. 424, 

 Orcus for Orca. 



