June 8, 1905] 



NA TURE 



AN INDIAN GARDEN. 



A' 



An Indian Garden. By Mrs. Henry Cooper Eggar. 



Pp. viii+i8i; illustrated. (London: John Murray, 



1904.) Price 7s. 6d. net. 

 N unpretentious little book, written in an easy 

 vein, printed on very light paper and in the 

 best of type, " An Indian Garden " might well be 

 suited to while away pleasantly an idle hour. There 

 is so much freshness about the book, so much 

 enthusiasm for the author's garden, such a lovable 

 unconsciousness of the inward triviality of the hun- 

 dred and one little incidents, servant, cobra, and dog 

 stories and harmless gossip woven into this tale of 

 amateur gardening, that one would fain make the 

 personal acquaintance of the writer. As we read on, 

 our interest centres more and more in the healthy, 

 vigorous, and amiable personality that sways this 

 old Indian Garden of 5J acres, whilst the garden 

 itself, with its old trees, its amaryllis and caladium 

 beds, its fernery, its obstreperous lawn of " Dooba " 

 grass {Cynodon Dactylon), and its general propensity 

 to run back to jungle, becomes so much background. 



In those circumstances one forgets to look out for 

 any systematic information on the conditions of 

 gardening in India, nor is there any room for criti- 

 cising seriously the author's botany. One does not 

 stop, for instance, to ponder over the curious " almond 

 tree " (p. 43) with the convolute embryo, or mind 

 that the lycopodium (p. 50) " that turns a beautiful 

 electric blue in the shade " is in reality a Selaginella 

 (S. iincinata), or that the deodars (p. 141) which ripen 

 their berries in July are evidently the debdars {Poly- 

 althia longifoUa) mentioned repeatedly in the earlier 

 pages. It must all be beautiful, and one longs to 

 see it. 



We are not told where the garden is. Its where- 

 abouts, like other things in the book, are hidden 

 under a delightful incognito. It is just a few feet 

 above the sea in a vast plain " with never a rise, 

 sufficient to be called a hill anywhere near for 100 

 miles." It may be, and very likely it is, in Bengal, 

 as the locality from' which the preface is dated and 

 other indications suggest; but that, again, matters 

 very little. It is in keeping with the light, playful 

 humour which pervades the whole book. Still, it 

 would be unfair to pass over the fact that there are 

 passages in it which for keenness of observation, 

 terseness and descriptive power, rise high above the 

 average level of the book. Thus on p. 41, " I like the 

 Casuarinas, though they are bad gardeners, and suck 

 up all the moisture in the earth for some long dis- 

 tance round their roots, so that nothing can possibly 

 live near them ; sometimes in the early morning they 

 weep it all back copiously like rain "; or on p. 145, 

 " If one wanted to photograph the movements of an 

 opening blossom, one should select the Crinum 

 augustum. It is a noble plant, this lily; about 4 feet 

 high, with scented flowers, numbering 22 in a bunch 

 at the end of a long stalk as thick as a ruler. I 

 passed by one just after a shower of rain this even- 

 ing, and noticed that four or five of the 4 inch long, 

 pink-striped buds were just ready to open. I came 

 NO. 1858, VOL. 72] 



by again shortly after, and lo ! and behold ! they 

 were open, quite wide open, too. In my next turn, 

 20 minutes after, the long petals had entirely curled 

 themselves backwards like rams' horns. One could 

 see them all a-quiver with the intensity of the move- 

 ment still. In one hour the points of those petals 

 must have described an arc of 8 or 9 inches or 

 more ! " 



There is a dainty coloured frontispiece representing 

 a branch of an .Antigonon (evidently A. leptopus) — 

 though it is difficult to see why a representative of an 

 exclusively American genus should usher in " An 

 Indian Garden " — and eighteen illustrations, photo- 

 graphic prints, some of them veritable gems for their 

 general beauty and exquisite clearness. 



Otto Staff. 



OUR BOOK SHELF. 



Animals I Have Known. By A. H. Beavan. Pp. 



304; illustrated. (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1905.) 



Price 5s. 

 If the present rate of issue be much longer 

 maintained, popular books on mammals (or 

 " animals," as they are still called by the man in 

 the street) will soon begin to rival in number those 

 devoted to birds. In the volume before us the author, 

 without having anything specially new to com- 

 municate, discourses pleasantly enough on the 

 mammals (both wild and domesticated) of our own 

 islands, as well as on those of two other countries, 

 namely, Australia and South America, with which he 

 is personally familiar. His anecdotes and descrip- 

 tions are emphasised by the numerous reproductions 

 from photographs with which the work is illustrated. 

 Most of these are first rate, the one of the thylacine, 

 or Tasmanian wolf, showing to perfection that 

 gradual merging of the tail in the body to which the 

 author specially alludes, and which so markedly dis- 

 tinguishes many of the lower mammals from their 

 more specialised relatives. 



Unfortunately, the text is marred by a number of 

 more or less inexcusable blunders and errors, which 

 cannot but deceive the class of readers for whom the 

 book is intended. On the very first page we are told, 

 for instance, that there lived in Britain during the 

 mammoth period " tapir-like three-hoofed creatures 

 with long snouts." This can evidently be nothing 

 else than the Oligocene palseotherium, an animal to 

 which reference is again made on p. 279, where 

 the author observes that he has momentarily for- 

 gotten its name — a nice admission to make in print ! 

 A similar " muddle " in regard to palaeontological 

 chronology is made on p 16, where we find opossums 

 included among the British Pleistocene fauna. Even 

 more serious is the deliberate statement on p. 222 

 that the duckbill, or platypus, is the only known 

 oviparous animal — more especially in view of certain 

 doubts that have been expressed of late years as to 

 whether this species does actually lay eggs. Again, 

 on p. 291 we are told that all South American monkeys 

 are furnished with prehensile tails, while ten pages 

 later we are informed that the vampire bat taps the 

 blood of its victims with its canine (instead of incisor) 

 teeth. Moreover, in the plate on p. 299 the author 

 figures as that of the true blood-sucking vampire 

 the head of a javelin-bat (Phyllostoma) or a nearly 

 allied species. Possibly the latter species may occa- 

 sionally suck blood, but it is not the vampire par 

 excellence. In the figures of a bat on p. 91, which 



