NA TURE 



[December 12, 1907 



for its justification. The author, aware of this rule of 

 prejudice, but encouraged by distinguished exceptions, 

 adopts the plan of " pegging away." These volumes 

 are the records of a scheme of higher education by 

 correspondence. Questions directed to the elucidation of 

 typical problems arising in the ordinary routine of the 

 mill arc set and distributed through the medium of the 

 technical Press amongst the workers, who are in- 

 \iled to transmit their solutions of the problems to 

 be criticised and corrected. A further object is to 

 assist the workers in preparing for the more formal 

 examination test of the City and Guilds Institute. 

 At the same time, the questions propounded are 

 judiciously chosen outside the formal or text-book 

 range of the examinations syllabus of that excellent 

 institution. We give a selection of subjects dealt 

 with : — Beating, with sections on the size and speed 

 of beater rolls, the efficiency of refining engines and 

 edge runners ; Sizing, Colouring and Loading, with 

 special problems ; the Paper Machine, with sectional 

 treatment of dandy rolls, wire and suction boxes; 

 the Qualities of Papers in relation to use, involving 

 practical problems in "bulk," transparency, tenacity 

 and stretch, special printing surfaces and the like. 



The chapters follow one another without any 

 attempt at a logical sequence, and each chapter com- 

 prises a selection of students' answers, also without 

 any attempt at classification. The author's critical 

 remarks alternate with the matter in inverted commas, 

 and these criticisms are quite as unequal as his 

 students' efforts. The reader is consequently con- 

 fronted on each page with a species of pictorial puzzle, 

 with the accompanying challenge to " find the police- 

 man. " 



We say " policeman " taking the accepted symbol of 

 law and order, and the student of technology is of 

 course seeking instruction in these fundamental regu- 

 lating factors of industrial processes. This defect ol 

 form, or want of form, necessarily limits the usefulness 

 of these volumes. As a " causerie " on mill practice they 

 will be found interesting and suggestive, but as a 

 guide to technological instruction the matter should 

 have been much more carefully ordered and edited. 

 An important function of the teacher is to teach his 

 subjects on positive, didactic lines, and the author 

 abdicates this position in not prefacing each chapter 

 with his own model answer to the questions pro- 

 pounded. 



These " Chapters on Paper-making " notwithstand- 

 ing constitute a most useful appeal to the latent intelli- 

 gence of our mill workers. 



Paper-mills are often so situated as to cut them off 

 from tuition classes, and, further, it must not be for- 

 gotten that most workers are on night-shifts in 

 alternate weeks, and this is a serious impediment to 

 instruction by classes or lectures. 



The author's educational work is therefore particu- 

 larly deserving of encouragement, and with a little 

 more conviction on his own part as to its solid value, 

 he will probably see fit so to improve the form and 

 style of subsequent " chapters " as more efficiently to 

 supplement and complement the work of the techno- 

 logical institutions. 



NO. 1989, VOL. yy] 



LOCAL ORNITHOLOGY. 

 (i) Bird-Life of the Borders, on Moorland and Sea, 

 with Faiinal Notes extending over Forty Years. By 

 Abel Chapman. Pp. xii-|-45S; map and illustra- 

 tions. (London : Gurney and Jackson, 1907.) Price 

 145. net. 



(2) The Birds of Kent. By William J. Davis. Pp. vi -1- 

 304; plate and map. (Dartford : J. and W. Davis, 

 1907.) Price 6s. net. 



(3) Notes on the Birds of Rutland. By C. Reginald 

 Haines. Pp. xlvii-i-175; 8 plates and map. 

 (London : R. H. Porter, 1907.) Price ys. 6d. net. 



(1) T N preparing the second edition of his pleasant 

 J- and valuable account of the birds of the 

 borders, Mr. Chapman has practically re-written on a 

 broader basis the first section of the book, i.e. that 

 relating to the Cheviots and the moorlands of the 

 borders. The second part, which treats of the north- 

 eastern sea-board, and, to some extent, may be con- 

 sidered as a treatise on the wild-fowling to be had 

 on that coast, as well as an account of the wild-fowl 

 to be met with there, has been merely revised. 



The borderland stretching from Cheviot to the 

 Solway comprises an area of hundreds of square miles 

 of mountain and moor. The author defines the region 

 covered by his observations as that mountain land 

 which remains as it was created, unaltered by the hand 

 of man, bounded by the line where the shepherd's 

 crook supplants the plough ; where heather and 

 bracken, whinstone and black- faced sheep repel corn 

 and cultivation ; where grouse and blackcock yet retain 

 their ancient domain, excluding partridge and pheas- 

 ant; and where the ring-ouzel dispossesses the black- 

 bird. 



" A region largely of peat as distinguished from 

 soil, of Howe, moss, and crag; of tumblingburns 

 and lonely moorland, glorious in all its primeval 

 beauty." 



As on the higher fell-ranges of the borders it takes 

 two to four acres to support each sheep; the hill 

 country is very thinly inhabited. In this edition the 

 author has slightly extended his purview so as to 

 include the subjacent country, namely, the foothills 

 which slope downwards from the higlier range, " and 

 which zone might perhaps be termed the sub-alpine 

 region." This is the fringe of the moorland, yet it 

 lies beyond the range of the plough, and its faunal 

 character may be exemplified by the substitution of the 

 blackcock, peewit, and whinchat for the red grouse, 

 golden plover, and wheat-ear of the higher land. Here 

 we come within the outer limit of many of the low- 

 land woodland forms. 



Beginning with the earlier months, the bird-life of 

 the moorlands is traced in a succession of chapters 

 throughout the year. The author having had forty 

 years' experience of the district to which he is devotedly 

 attached, and the book being preeminently one of 

 personal observations, and of statements of facts, as 

 seen by him, supplemented and expanded to some 

 extent by theories which he felt justified in founding 

 upon these observations, it follows that in these 

 articles we have a very complete account of the avi- 

 fauna of a district which is little known and visited. 



