Marcu It, 1915] 
NATURE 31 

book. Experiments carried on at Ottawa on the 
distances travelled by marked flies showed various 
ranges of flight up to 7oo yards; observations 
quoted as made by Dr. Copeman in rural districts 
in Norfolk give a flight-range of 1700 yards. The 
book concludes with a discussion of the best 
methods for destroying fly-maggots and _ for 
checking the facilities for the breeding of the 
insects. Bavaria enjoys the reputation of a note- 
worthy paucity of flies, “perhaps due to the 
extreme cleanliness of Bavarian cities.” Dr. 
Hewitt’s book can be most heartily commended 
to all enthusiasts on behalf of public health, as 
well as to students of the anatomy and life-history 
of insects. Grebe: 
GEOGRAPHICAL TiEXT-BOOKS. 
Geography of Australasia. By Griffith 
Taylor. Pp. 176. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 
1914.) Price 1s. 6d. 
(2) The Pupils’ Class-Book of Geography. 
ee) eee seeleaty 

(mA 
By 
England and Wales, pp. 8o. 
Price 4d. The British Isles, pp. 118. Price 
6d. The British Dominions, pp. Price 
6d. (London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1914.) 
(3) Macmillan’s Geographical Exercise Books. 
With @Questions by B. €: Wallis. i., The 
British Isles, pp. 48. Price 6d. i., Europe, 
128. 
pp- 48. Price 6d. iii., The British Empire, 
pp. 48. Price 6d. (London: Macmillan and | 
Co., Ltd.) 
(4) Bacon... Sixpenny Contour Atlas. South-east 
England edition. Pp. 41. (London: G. W. 
Bacon and Co., Ltd.) 
(5) The Map and its Story. Pp. 44. (London: 
G. W. Bacon and Co., Ltd.) 
(1) NCE the pupil or student gets past the 
general outlines and principles of 
geography (which are so difficult for the author 
and teacher to lay down in terms that are other- 
wise than summary and dull), he ought to find 
out the real interests and fascination of the 
subject. A book like Mr. Taylor's will help him 
to do so. This writer has an unusual faculty 
for keeping steadily in view the interaction of 
those phenomena which geographers set out to 
study, and for picking out the right facts from 
the special departments of knowledge on which 
geographers have to draw. He also sets great 
store by the use of the map to illustrate special 
points, and in this direction shows considerable 
originality; the maps are generally clear, though 
sometimes injudiciously reduced, and occasionally 
rather severely generalised. The descriptive and 
explanatory writing could not well be clearer, 
NO. 2367, VOL. 95] 
Price 1s. net. 

and this being so, the author is safe in carrying 
his readers into such unaccustomed topics as 
that of the paragraphs in which he discusses the 
former history of river courses and the extent 
of land, a “journey into past geological times” 
which is justified, as he is able ingeniously to 
show the bearing of former physical conditions 
upon modern communications. This book would 
be an excellent introduction to Australasia as a 
special subject. 
(2) Both the manner and the matter of Mr. 
Lay’s three little volumes, according to their 
lights, are fairly satisfactory, and a large 
number of questions and exercises are provided, 
many of which will carry the pupil well beyond 
the scope of the work, and are properly sug- 
gestive. Others tend to throw back to the old 
narrow field of geographical teaching, demanding 
merely a list (e.g., of “the highest mountains 
of the Pennine Chain”), while it is difficult to 
conceive in what possible geographical connection 
such a question is asked as, ‘Do you know the 
name of a Councillor? A Magistrate?” Pieces 
of poetry are set for learning, but the geographi- 
cal value of poetry is too often doubtful, especially 
when its language is as difficult as that of W. J. 
Mickle’s Mhewtextwior 
these books illustrates at some points one of 
translation of Camoens. 
the geographer’s besetting dangers, generalisa- 
tion; such sentences as ‘‘ Edinburgh, which is 
built the famous Castle Rock”; “The 
Dominion of Canada is provided with a splendid 
system of waterways’’; in the same country “the 
various minerals—with the exception of . . . gold 
and silver—are scarcely worked,” are statements 
may be 
on 
which, in the want of qualification, 
highly misleading. 
The maps (black and white) in this series are 
commendable, though we should hesitate to sub- 
scribe to the claim that ‘‘no atlases or other 
maps” are “required.” A point of some interest 
emerges on making a comparison of maps in this 
series in Mr. Taylor’s book, and in “The Map 
and Its Story,” presently to be noticed. The 
desirability is revealed of some attempt at 
standardising distribution maps. The maps 
illustrating the vegetation of Australia in these 
three books are, it is true, laid out on rather 
different systems, but their methods are suffici- 
ently similar to show how widely divergent are 
the results obtained. A pupil comparing the 
three would be excusably “floored ” in attempting 
to gather from them the extent and locality of 
forest and desert areas, and so forth, in Australia, 
and the differences are such that one or more of 
the maps must be very seriously in error. 
