

APRIL 22, 1915] 
NATURE 
209 


and seals, the petrel and the albatross, the fishes 
and cephalopods, the Portuguese Man of War and 
the coral reef, with the seaweeds, the microscopic 
plankton, and the phenomena of phosphorescence, 
with the winds and the clouds, with the,waves and 
their measurement. They have also something 
to say regarding old sea monsters and old sea 
customs and chanteys. 
Captain Carpenter was a lieutenant on the 
Challenger, and has had other opportunities of 
deep-sea work; his collaborator, Captain Wilson- 
Barker, served afloat for twenty years, in part in 
connection with deep-sea telegraph cable work ; 
so the joint authors have been for a long time in 
intimate association with the life about which they 
write. There is a pleasant directness in the book, 
and a not less pleasant smell of the sea. There 
are numerous excellent illustrations, many of them 

Fic. 3.—Black-backed gull. 
old friends, others delightfully fresh (Fig. 3). We 
believe that many amateurs will enjoy this book 
very much and profit by -it in proportion. It 
ought to be in all ship libraries. 
\We must note, however, that the authors would 
have been well advised if they had availed them- 
selves of the services of some competent naturalist 
to remove ‘numerous inaccuracies which are as 
flies in the ointment. Thus it is a blemish to 
speak of the parrot’s beak of the sea-egg, of the 
air cells beneath the gannet’s skin being the main 
factors in the bird’s powerful flight, of the parrot- 
like beaks of the puffin, of the Ctenophora pro- 
gressing by small hairs (cilia) which outline their 
bodies, or of Noctiluca as a small jelly. The figure 
of the octopus (on- page 81) with. irregularly 
branched arms requires some explanation. 
From ‘‘ Nature Notes for Ocean Voyagers.” 
| 
Africa, which will take teachers and pupils in that 
interesting country further into the heart of thing's 
than a more informative primer is likely to do. 
While it is thoroughly objective, dealing mainly 
with the succession of flowers in a country with 
a fascinating flora, it touches things imaginatively 
as well as scientifically, and aims at the culture 
of appreciation and delight as much as at the 
diffusion of knowledge. There is a very interest- 
ing foreword by Prof. Patrick Geddes, and Mr. 
Allerston has supplied a fine set of illustrative 
photographs of characteristic South African 
plants. We wish the book good speed. 

THREE NATURALIST-TRAVELLERS 3 
HE chief feature common to these three books 
is that they deal with the researches of 
British naturalists in the belt of country which, 
from the Arctic Ocean to Equa- 
torial Africa, lies along the boun- 
dary between Eurafrica and Asia. 
(1) Mr. Bury’s “Arabia In- 
felix” describes the eastern wall 
of the Great Rift Valley in south- 
western Arabia. The land lies 
low for about thirty miles from 
the Red Sea at Hodeida; it then 
rises by bold precipices to the 
height of from eight to ten thous- 
and feet, whence the plateau 
sinks gradually eastward to the 
Great Red Desert of Arabia, at 
the level of from three to four 
thousand feet. The road inland 
to Sanaa begins its steep ascent 
through ‘‘The Gate of the Moun- 
tains,’ where a huge rock has 
fallen across the ravine and made 
a natural arch. By scaling cliffs 
of appalling steepness, up which 
the Turks have had the temerity 
to plan a railway, it rises to the 
height of gooo ft. It passes 
through various zones of vegeta- 
tion. The spurs and ravines are 
terraced for coffee or clad in 
thick jungle. The ravines are 
so steep and narrow ‘that one may almost 
touch the tree-tops which grow out of them, 
and so overgrown that only a green twilight 
penetrates to their recesses, where the lurid 
blooms of the snake-onion flame among the fern 
and the giant cobra drowses in the hush of noon.” 
So steep are the precipices that “it gives one a 
crick in the neck to count the coffee-gardens up 
those outrageous steeps, while wondering if they 
are garnered with a derrick.” 
Mr. Bury writes with a unique knowledge of 
this part of Arabia, and his short book is packed 
with | information. Unfortunately there are 
scarcely any references to the. former literature, 
1/(z) *' Arabia Infelix; or, The Turks in Yamen.” By G. W. Bury. Pp 
x+213. (London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd,, 1915.) Price 7s. 6a. net. 
* (2) “Alone in ‘the Sleeping-Sickness Country.” By Dr.’ EF. Oswald. 
Pp. xiit2r9. (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Triibner and Co., Ltd., 1915.) 
Price 8s. 6d. net. : 5 
pass aiiebie: has a Rar ees | (3) “A Summer on the Yenesei (1914). By MJD. Hawiland: ’ Pp. xii+ 
s oll o 
| 328. (London: Edward Arnold, 1915.) Price tos. 6d. net. 
NO. 2373, VOL. 95| 
