BOOK NOTICES 6i 



BOOK NOTICES. 



Sport in Wildest Britain. By H. Hesketh Prichard. Illustrated 

 from Water-colour Paintings by Dr E. A. Wilson. London : 

 William Heinemann, 1921. Pp. 134. Price 25s. net. 



Here is a book that makes a direct appeal to the naturalist and 

 sportsman, and in particular to the Scottish naturalist ; for it relates the 

 experiences of a sportsman who is a nature-lover, and who gathered 

 much of the information set down here so easily and vivaciously on the 

 mountains and :n the islands of our own country. The book discusses 

 in a series of unconnected chapters the author's quests after Grey Seals 

 and Common Seals, Capercaillie, Black Geese and Grey Geese, Curlew, 

 Snipe, Ducks of various kinds and Ptarmigan ; but the record is no dry 

 chronicle, and the author varies his pages by historical references, as in 

 the case of the Capercaillie, and by personal anecdote which touches off 

 the characters now of a Highland gillie and again of an Irish fishennan, 



Mr Prichard strongly advocates the protection of British Seals, 

 though, as has been pointed out on another page, he errs in supposing 

 that the Grey Seals Protection Act has lapsed, and definite enquiry 

 seems to disprove his statement that clubbing of Seals has begun again 

 on Haskeir. He would go further than most advocates of protection, 

 however, and states " that absolute protection might be given to all seals 

 on the English coast without the very smallest fear of bad results." 

 A more feasible method lies in his alternative suggestions that definite 

 sanctuaries or reserves should be established, or that a close season 

 from April to October should be created for the Common Seal, except 

 in the vicinity of estuaries where serious damage to fisheries has been 

 proved. 



The Direction of Human Evolution. By Edwin Grant 

 Conklin, Professor of Biology in Princeton University. 

 Humphrey Milford, at the Oxford University Press. [1922.] 

 Pp. xiii-t-247. Price I2S. 6d. net. 



Professor Conklin has done well to publish in book form these 

 lectures on the past and possible future of the human race, which he 

 first delivered in the University of North Carohna in 1920. As might be 

 expected of a trained biologist, he views the problem he has set himself 

 in a scientific spirit, and having taken his stand upon the ascertained 

 facts regarding the past evolution and present status of man, he reaches 

 forward cautiously and tentatively to peer into the future of mankind. 

 Thus having examined the doctrine of evolution in the present state of 

 knowledge, he proceeds to deal specifically with the evolution of man 

 and the peopling of the earth, sketching the stages of development from 



