DISCOVKUY 



ahi-rrations of society, which it is now attempted to 

 exalt over the direct expression of the inventive and 

 creative faculty itself." 



* * * 4< * 



We need not draw any invidious comparisons, as 

 Shelley did in this passage, between science and art. 

 Indeed, they cannot be compared. Both are equally 

 important and, as we have already remarked, either 

 without the other is incomplete. But the main idea 

 of Shelle\-'s magnificent declaration remains true : 

 art is the factor that keeps imagination alive amongst 

 us. and so helps to keep us from becoming morally 

 worthless and intellectually sterile. For it is imagina- 

 tion which quickens the mind of the inventor and 

 researcher, and which dri\-cs the explorer into unknown 

 territorv. No, in these days, w'hen knowledge is 

 increasing so widely and rapidly, the man of science 

 and the man of art are beginning to realise the value 

 of each other's w-ork. The wider the horizon, the 

 deeper the comradeship. 



***** 



In the field of co-ordination of knowledge no less 

 than in accurate observation of nature, men like 

 Fabre ' and Maeterlinck " have done most valuable 

 work, for they have given us in fine prose the results of 

 their minute investigations. Mr. H. J. Massingham ' 

 has applied the careful methods of observation used 

 by Fabre in his study of insect life to the study of 

 birds. Some Birds of the Countryside, a book that 

 I have lately had the good fortune to encounter, is 

 more personally written and somewhat less micro- 

 scopic in its observations than Fabre's work. It 

 endeavours to show birds as part of the beauty of 

 the universe, and so assign them a place in the system 

 of creation. Most of us have hitherto known Mr. 

 Massingham as the driving-power behind the Plumage 

 Act, but in his introduction to A Treasury oj Seven- 

 teenth-Century Verse* published last year, he showed his 

 w^orth both as a literary critic and as a worker in 

 research ; and he now appears as a writer with a 

 broad outlook and a fine, even if at times a rather 

 self-conscious, style. 



***** 



The most entertaining chapter of the book is that 

 devoted to Charles Waterton, a naturalist of the early 



' Fabre is perhaps best known in this country for his books 

 on The Hunling Wasps, The Mason-Bees, and The Life of the 

 Caterpillar. These and eight other volumes have been trans- 

 lated into English by A. Teixcira de Mattos and are published 

 by Hodder and Stoughton. (8s. 6rf. each.) 



» The Life of the Bee, translated by Alfred Sutro. (Allen & 

 Unwin, 5s.) 



' Some Birds of the Countryside, by H. J. Massingham. 

 (Sec reference under Books Received.) 



* Macniillan and Co. 



nineteenth century, chiefly known for his Wanderings 

 in South .Imerica (1.S25). Waterton 's jottings on natural 

 history are indeed so interspersed with remarks on 

 politics, religion, and history, and by stretches of 

 autobiography, that they are often more entertaining 

 than instructive. Here is a political jotting : " If 

 driven to extremities, I had rather be slain by the 

 sword of a Tory at noonday than be stabbed at mid- 

 night by the muck-fork of a sinuous, tortuous, treacher- 

 ous Whig. . . . Poor Britain I I pity thee from 

 my heart ! What with Jew and what with Gentile, 

 thy Parliament House will soon want a Lord Protector 

 with his whitening brush. ' Sir Harn,' Vane ! ' The 

 Lord deliver me from Sir Harry Vane ! " 



***** 

 Waterton appears to have gone through a pleasantly 

 adventurous life, according to himself and his Latin- 

 quoting biographer, Dr. Hobson. In his earlier days, 

 for example, he tells us that he strangled boa constrictors 

 in the wilds of Guiana ; in latter days we read of him 

 climbing, with his friend Captain Jones, to the head of 

 the guardian angel of the castle of St. Angelo at Rome, 

 " where w^e stood on one leg " ; of a fall from the top 

 of a tree at the age of fifty-eight ; of an attempt to 

 fly off the roof of his stables with a pair of self-made 

 wings, from which he was fortunately dissuaded by 

 Dr. Hobson's quotation of the fate of Icarus ; and 

 finally of various astounding gymnastic feats in his 

 late seventies. Dr. Hobson tells us the manner in 

 which Waterton in his eightieth year would welcome 

 him " actually dancing down the whole length of the 

 broad w-alk, occasionally throwing one of his loose 

 slippers from his foot high up in the air above his head 

 and e.xpcrtly catching it in his hand in its descent," a 

 scene worthy of Alice in \\'onderland. .Most typical 

 of Watcrton's apparent reaction to danger is the fol- 

 lowing incident : "In 1825 he was in Bruges, when 

 the Belgians were revolting for religious liberty. As 

 the cannon-balls whistled round, he sought shelter at 

 a half-open door. . . . ' Just as I arrived at the 

 threshold a fat old dame shut the door full in my 

 face. " Thank you, old lady," said I ; " Feli.-c quam 

 jaciunt alicna pericula cautam." ' (' Happy she who 

 learns caution from another's danger.') " Well, we can 

 onlv believe that cannon-balls were not so demoralising 

 as a modern shell I 



***** 

 In the coming conference on Disarmament to be 

 held in the United States, the actors on whom the 

 greatest attention will be focussed will be the envoi's 

 from Japan. We may well imagine that they wnll 

 assume a firm attitude against naval disarmament, 

 but to predict this as a certainty is a very different 

 matter. From the period of the Russo-Japanese War 

 we ha\-e become accustomed to regard the Japanese 



