March i, 190b] 



NA TURE 



415 



He rather hopes that this batch of them will make 

 it apparent that they are a part of his method, or, 

 rather, a part of himself; and since they occupy so 

 much space in the book it seems only right that they 

 should appear on his title-page. Possibly the reader 

 is not meant to take them all too seriously, for Mr. 

 Selous warns us that he has not suppressed his errors 

 even when he happened to know them, because, among 

 other reasons, " if one has got in some idea or reflec- 

 tion that pleases one, or a piece of descriptive writing 

 that does not seem amiss, how tiresome to have to 

 scratch it out, merely because it is founded on a 

 wrong apprehension ! — the spire to come tumbling 

 just for the want of a base! " 



The author rather seems to deprecate being included 

 in the ranks of the ornithologists, his ambition being 

 to make a naturalist who shall use neither a gun nor <\ 

 cabinet. That is all very wf.'.t ; but to decline to avail 

 oneself of the work done by others is sometimes to 

 miss the clue whicn would explain some puzzle. 1 1 



herring-gull." The chapters on seals are very in- 

 teresting, for few people have the chance of watching 

 these animals. A good index is a great advantage to 

 the reader, not always found in books of this kind. 



A considerable part of Mr. Boraston's new work is 

 occupied by an account of a remote and little known 

 corner of Anglesey, and it is saying a good deal to 

 say that this is perhaps the pleasantest and most 

 interesting part of the book. How he journeyed there 

 — and back — and what birds and other things he saw 

 is told in the attractive and distinctly original style 

 so much commended in the notices of his former work. 

 Of more highly scientific interest, perhaps, is the 

 series of careful notes which the author made upon a 

 young cuckoo. These include several important ob- 

 servations which must not be detailed here ; but we 

 cannot refrain from quoting the author's concluding 

 reflections on the strangely ferocious fledgling he 

 watched so patiently. " And knowing it for a solitary 

 and a wanderer beyond any of its kind, smuggled 



-Oyster-Catchers. From " Nature-Tones and Undertones.' 



he had handled cabinet specimens, or if he did not 

 " hate the British bird book " so heartily, he might 

 have known why the white lines on the diver's neck 

 shone in such a peculiar way in the sunlight (p. 60), 

 and perhaps would have experienced increased enjoy- 

 ment in consequence. A theory anent the old puzzle 

 of the puffin and the bunch of fish it brings home in 

 i(s ornate beak, and some instructive observations on 

 young fulmars, are only a crumb or two out of the 

 good things which we mark in reading many charm- 

 ing pages. One of the illustrations shows birds 

 following the ways of " Nature, red in tooth and 

 claw"; and this (together with that of a herring- 

 gull dealing" with a downv puffin) we dedicate to 

 the conversion of those who favour the protection of 

 (he larger gulls. We dare not begin to quote for 

 fear of never ending, and must confine ourselves to 

 this one sentence in explanation of the plate : " I saw 

 another kittiwake being savagely murdered by another 

 NO. 1896, VOL. 73] 



into life in an alien nest, tended in blind devotion by 

 cieatures it requites as blindly by destroying their 

 own offspring ; fashioned like a hawk to be hunted 

 by every chit that flies ; never to mate, never to nest, 

 never to rear or lead its young; remembering this, I 

 could have wished that this Unnatural Selection had 

 not been, or that this strange mockery of life might 

 be undone." In this chapter, too, we have an in- 

 teresting inquiry into the theory of the assimilation 

 of the cuckoo's eggs to those of the foster-species, with 

 an analysis of collections of more than seventy nests of 

 various birds containing cuckoos' eggs and the eggs 

 of the foster-parents. The author writes, " The vari- 

 ation exhibited in the collections I have seen was 

 considerable, but I could in most cases have improved 

 the assimilation by transferring the eggs from one 

 nest to another. Unless more convincing evidence 

 were brought forward than such as was furnished by 

 the seventy-six nests mentioned above, I should con- 



