I30 THE SCOTTISH NATURALIST 



conditions against which living things have to contend — the problems 

 due to the tides, the dangers of drowning or drying up, the risks from 

 storms and fresh-water floods. These make the shore the most diverse 

 and difficult of all the inhabited areas, and have created a struggle for 

 existence more intense than anywhere else. 



Manifold devices have been adopted by shore creatures to circumvent 

 inanimate nature. Here are described their modes of defence and 

 offence, their ways of resisting the waves, their co-operative associations, 

 their methods of moving, feeding and breathing, and the adaptations 

 which ensure the survival of their progeny in a world of innumerable 

 dangers. The naturalist who reads this work will catch many fresh 

 glimpses of the why and wherefore of habits and structures, will be 

 impressed by the inventiveness of life, and will marvel at the precision 

 with which shore creatures have turned to good account the dangers 

 which threatened to overwhelm them. There are many illustrations, 

 from which we select for reproduction that of a male Butterfish protecting 

 its eggs, of which it is related that when the eggs were moved into very 

 shallow water, the fish followed and again coiled round them, so 

 persistently refusing to desert its charge that it had to be pushed again 

 into deeper water. 



Some Scottish Breeding Duck : Their Arrival and Dispersal. 

 By Evelyn V. Baxter and Leonora Jeffrey Rintoul. Edinburgh : 

 Oliver & Boyd, 1922. Pp. 90. Price 5s. net. 



For the study of the changes which time works in the animal life 

 of all, but especially of civilised countries, it is essential that, at different 

 stages of progress, detailed surveys should be taken of the situation. 

 Readers of The Scottish Naturatist are familiar with the excellent series 

 of articles in which the authors carried out such surveys in regard to 

 seveival species of Wild Ducks, and the present work continues the story, 

 dealing in all with the records of appearance, of breeding, and of the 

 gradual extension of range of nine native species. The records here 

 collected are invaluable as a basis for future observation and speculation. 

 They are not always complete, for it is next to impossible to garner every 

 stray reference, and it cannot always be assumed that a first observation 

 necessarily means a new arrival, but, nevertheless, they indicate a 

 definite and remarkable power in these Ducks of colonising fresh areas 

 in recent years. 



In an interesting chapter summarising the result of their labours 

 the writers state that this extension is probabl}^ due to overflow from 

 congested breeding areas and to a tendency of the birds to linger on in 

 their winter quarters until they breed there, and they pay a welcome 

 tribute to the efficiency of the Wild Birds Protection Acts in helping 

 on this desirable change. This short treatise can be heartily 

 recommended to naturalists as embodying a type of observation and 

 research which, applied to this or other groups of animals, will bear 

 rich fruit in time to come. 



