134 



KNOWLEDGE. 



[June 1, 1899. 



Levantine Shea/neater {Pirffinns yeVcouanus) near Scarhorough 

 (Ibis, April, 1899, p. 308). At the mectins; of the British Ornillio- 

 logists' Chib, lield on February 27tli, IS99, Mr. Howard Saunders 

 exhibited a male example of the Levantine Shearwater, shot by a wild 

 fowler near Scarborough on February .jth. This is, we belieye, but 

 the third example of this Shearwater which has been recorded for the 

 British Islands. The bii'd is an inhabitant of the Mediterranean and 

 Black Seas. 



Spotted tiandpiper CTriiigoides macularius) in Ireland (Ibis, 

 April, 1899, p. 314). There are many records of this American 

 Sandpiper haying visited our Islands, but few, if .any. have been 

 properly authenticated. Mr. F. Curtis exhibited, at the February 

 meeting of the British Oraitliologisfcs' Club, a female specimen which 

 had been shot on February 2nd, 1899, at J< inea, Co. Longford, Ireland, 

 by Mr. Frank Roberts. 



Red Grouse and Bantam Fowl Hybrid (Ibis, Ajn^il, 1899, p. 314). 

 A remarkable hybrid bet^veen a male Red Grouse and a female Ban- 

 tam Fowl was exhibited by Mr. J. Gr. Millais at the meeting of the 

 British Ornithologists' Chib on February 27th, 1899. 



Cranes in Norfolk {Zoologist, March 15th, 1889, p. 119).— In his 

 interesting "Ornithological Record from Norfolk," which Mr. J. H. 

 Gurney annually contributes to the Zoologist, a record is given of 

 four Cranes {Orus communis) having been seen by Mr. Pashley near 

 the Gaven on April 7th, 1898. They were next reported as visiting 

 a piece of water near the sea at Weybourne, and were subsequently 

 seen at Runton, after which they took their departure, happily un- 

 molested. Three hundred years ago the Crane used to breed ia the 

 fens of the east coasts, but now these birds pay us hut the briefest 

 and most occasional visits. 



Lesser Whitethroat in the Outer Hebrides {Annals of Scottish 

 Natural Eistori/, April 1899. p. 109).— Mr. W. Eagle Clarke records 

 that Mr. W. L. Macgillivray obtained a specimen of this bird on the 

 west side of the remote Island of Barra, on October 2tth, 1898. 

 Sylvia curruca is a rare bird in Scotland, and has not hitherto, 

 apparently, been obtained in the Outer Hebrides. 



King ISider [Somateria spectabilis) in the Shetland Islands 

 (Annals of Scottish Natural Eistorii, April, 1899, p. Ill, and The 

 Field, April 8th, 1899). — A male specimen of this beautiful and very 

 rare visitor from the far north was obtained by Mr. Eustace Blankart, 

 of Sandness, on the west side of Shetland, in Vaila Sound, on February 

 24th, 1899. 



All contributions to the column, either in the way of notes 

 or photographs, should be forwarded to Hakry F. Witherby, 

 at 1, Eliot Place, Blackheath, Kent. 



iaoticts of Boofts. 



» ■ ■- 



The Life Story of Sir Charles Tihlim Briijhl. By Edward 

 and Charles Bright. 2 vols. (Constable.) Illustrated. £3 3s. 

 net. Your mere reviewer of books stands ap])alled at this — it 

 is at once so good and so bad ! There is too much of it, and 

 there is too little of it. Under no circumstances must it be 

 lightly approached as a biography, for it is a vast deal more. 

 While between its covers one finds the life-story of a man who 

 was at once a genius and a "strong man,'' so also .ioes one find 

 a very complete history of the pioneer cables of the world. 

 Nor is this all. Would you read technical detail of the manu- 

 facture, the laying, and the working of cables 'i Here you shall 

 find it. Would you read of the customs of the Far East and 

 the Far West ? Then take this book. Are you interested in 

 the flora and fauna by land and by sea? Again, this book. 

 But, alas ! the arrangement, or want of arrangement, throughout 

 is bad, and one finds much needless repetition and very many 

 stupid misprints. Yet through it all the strong personality of 

 the man, his quaint humour, his calm patience, and his fierce 

 determination are ever with us '? To give one striking instance 

 of each of these traits, Sir Charles was, upon one occasion, 

 approached by an old schoolfellow of whom he had lost sight 

 for a number of years, and on this unexpected meeting quite 

 failed to recognise him. The latter recalled himself to Bright 

 by remarking that they had been interrupted in a fight at 

 school. And Sir Charles mildly suggested, " Let's finish it 

 now." As to his patience, we may suggest his remark, " I don't 

 say that we shall do it now, but we shall do it some time ''^ 

 and this after more than one failure to lay the first Atlantic 

 cable. And, as regards determination, what are we to say of the 

 man who quietly suggested that he was in a position to " take " 

 Arecibo if his operations there should be interfered with, or of 

 the man who worked on while his staff were daily dying of 



fever — worked on, indeed, till he had actually to be carried 

 aboard a ship bound for home, and even then left his work with 

 great reluctance. It is interesting to note that this same 

 energy of his led him into at least one curious little error. 

 Quite early in the book we read of his having been bothered by 

 a would-be inventor, who argued that the cable would not even 

 sink to the bottom of the Atlantic, but must rather be held 

 suspended at a certain depth by the great density of the water 

 there. Sir Charles stated that this was absurd, since he had 

 .specimens of shells, etc., from the bottom of that same ocean. 

 Now this was surely no argument to offer his opponent, since the 

 latter, to be consistent, must surely urge that the bottom itself iras 

 held in sitspensiun. Indeed, of the book in its entirety one hardly 

 knows how to speak. It is certainly good enough to make us 

 wish it were a vast deal better. The main fault probably lies 

 in that we have some four books rolled into one, and of these 

 four each per se would be good ; but the tangle by no means 

 brings out the merits of any one of them. The com])osite 

 result is a record of very many useful and interesting facts, the 

 collection of which must have entailed a vast deal of labour. 

 Yet the interest and the use of the book are constantly 

 tumbling one on top of the other, so that both are, to the 

 reader who has not much time to spare, less easily accessible 

 than they should be. 



An Elementari/ Text Book- of Botany. By Sydney H. Tines, 

 M.A., D.sc, F.R.S. (Swan Sonnenschein.) 9s. The production 

 of a satisfactory te.xt book of botany becomes a more and more 

 arduous task in proportion as the wealth of material increases, 

 from which a selection has to be made. Prof. Vines dealt 

 with this mass of detail in an admirable, if somewhat encyclo- 

 poedic manner, in his well-known Students' Text Book. But 

 experience has shown the necessity of further subdivision and 

 the preparation of a book mainly addressed to beginners. The 

 ])resent volume occupies a position midway between the 

 Student's Text Book and Prantl's Lehrbuoh der Botanik, on 

 which the former was founded. But Prof. Vines has not only 

 reduced the bulk of liis book ; the contents have been revised, 

 and many topics that are still under examination have been 

 excluded. We think this principle of exclusion might have been 

 carried still further. We are, however, grateful that the subject 

 of nuclear subdivision is treated very shortly — centrospheres and 

 centrosomes. whatever part they play, or are supposed to play in 

 the process of nuclear division, do not appear in the text — but 

 the omission of some other matters where our knowledge is not 

 yet sufficiently precise might be recommended. For reasons 

 of clearness and convenience the book is divided into four parts — 

 Morphology, Anatomy and Histologj-, Physiology, and Classifi- 

 cation, but the student is wisely advised not to read each part 

 separately and consecutively, but to maintain a parallel study in 

 each. In the last section we notice that though Algie and Fungi 

 are united in the one group Thallophyta ; the Mosses and Ferns 

 are not similarly connected under the common division of 

 Archegoniatoe. 



Kant on Education. Translated into English by Annette 

 Churton. With an Introduction by Mrs. Rhys Davids. (Kegan 

 Paul & Co.) 2s. 6d. This little book presents to English 

 readers, for the first time, the admirable and suggestive 

 "Thoughts on Education," which Kant prepared for his pro- 

 fessorial courses, and wliich were originally published in 

 Germany {Immamiel Kant iiber Padayoyik) nearly a hundred 

 years ago. The book is furnished with an excellent introduction, 

 in wliich Mrs. Ehys Davids traces the influence of Rousseau on 

 the mind of the master, and bespeaks for his work the con- 

 sideration of educators in our own day. " There is much in 

 these lecture-notes worthy to be considered by educators for 

 many a generation to come. Now and again the hand of the 

 writer is on the pulse of the future. Always he is earnest, 

 wise, and sane." 



Volcanoes : Their Structnre and Significance. By T. G. 

 Bonney, d.sc, ll.d., f.r.s. (Murray.) 6s. The object of this 

 work is well expressed in the title, and the result is to give us 

 one of the most readable, and from the eminence of the author, 

 one of the most instructive books on a series of phenomena 

 whose complete explanation is not yet forthcoming. By 

 picturesque and vivid language Prof. Bonney conducts his 

 readers over historic and interesting ground where volcanoes 

 have been and are in active operation. He calls up the picture 

 that these volcanoes have presented when belching forth their 



