February 8, 1906] 



NA TURE 



343 



ture of Pliocene horses by J. Charlton should also be 

 noticed as a verv spirited and excellent composition 

 (p. 167). 



Mm 



Mr. Knipe's dedication of his 



The following is 

 work : — 



To Nature. 

 How fair, O Nature, are thy looks 



In these thy matron days : 

 And with what light a heart thou seem'st 

 To tread thy thorny ways. 



Man sees thee joying in thy life, 

 So full, so fresh, so free, 



As if thy toil in ages past 

 Had nothing been to thee. 



And well may he beneath thy spell, 

 Forget thy inner life, 



The waste and suffering in thy breast, 

 And never ceasing strife. 



Or if so be he needs must think 

 Of all the tumult there, 



He knows at least one end it has, — 

 To make thee grow more fair. 

 It is not so much a. matter of serious importance 

 whether one reads patiently the carefully executed 

 text in verse or turns with a disdainful smile from 

 such lines as : — 



'* The whale-like Zeuglodonts that off these coasts, 

 In Eocene times pursued the finny hosts, 

 Are seen no more : but forms in tooth allied, 

 Though skulled more as the Dolphin, swim the tide." 



Suffice it to say that the book, as a whole, is admir- 

 ably illustrated and must have cost the author a very 

 large sum to produce. The pictures alone form an 

 excellent guinea's worth, and will prove a real joy to 

 the younger generation as well as to some of the elder, 

 and there is no single picture in the book which has 

 not been drawn expressly for the present work. 



SOME MAMMALIAN TYPES. 1 



"|\,T R. RENSHAW, whose pleasant essays on 



■'■*-*■ African mammals are fresh in our memories, 



has in his new volume taken a wider field, and 



selected his types from the fauna of the whole world. 



1 " More Natural History Essays." By Graham Renshaw, M.B., F.Z.S. 

 Pp. 243; illustrated. (London and Manchester: Sherratt and Hughes 

 1905) Price6i.net. 



NO. 1893, V0L - 73] 



They are still confined to mammalian forms, and this 

 being the case it would perhaps have been possible 

 to give these volumes a more original title than that 

 adopted by Waterton for his 

 famous essays published in the 

 first half of the last century. But 

 Mr. Renshaw 's essays are de- 

 cidedly original in the treatment 

 of the subject. They deal not 

 merely with the natural history 

 of animals, but also with the his- 

 tory of our knowledge of them. 

 Thus the history of the Addax 

 antelope, inhabiting the great 

 desert, is traced from the time of 

 the ancient Egyptians and of Pliny 

 to its modern re-discovery early in 

 the last century ; and that of the 

 extinct northern sea-cow in con- 

 nection with the adventures of the 

 searchers after the North-west 

 Passage. 



Never before, indeed, has the 

 history of mammalian forms been 

 more attractively presented to the 

 public. The history of the dis- 

 covery of some o£ these grand 

 forms of life is often a true 

 romance of natural history, which, 

 appealing strongly to the author, 

 is graphically re-told by him ; and 

 his enthusiasm enables him to 

 carry the reader with him to see in his mind's eye 

 the "country inhabited by the beasts he describes, and 

 to feel some of the keen delight experienced by the 

 hunter-naturalist when some such beautiful trophy as 

 the sable antelope rewarded him for all his toil. He 

 excels in describing the natural scenery — the setting 

 of the subjects of his essays; and writing of the 

 Malay tapir, of " antediluvian appearance," conjures 

 up a most realistic mental picture of the home of the 

 Palaeotheres, their ancient representatives, when in 

 far-off davs they roamed over swamps covering the 

 present site of Paris. 



The misconceptions which hang about the vampire 

 bat in the popular mind are here cleared away, and 

 the statement that it is difficult to stop the bleeding 

 set up by it suggests a search of the salivary glands 

 for any ferment that might hinder the coagulation 



Natural History Essays 



of blood, and some interesting remarks thereon. 

 Although it was discovered by Columbus, few people 

 perhaps realise that a seal inhabits the warm waters 



