November 4, 1922] 



NA TURE 



599 



The Reopening of Europe. 



Frequented Ways : A General Survey of the Land Forms, 

 Climates, and Vegetation of Western Europe, con- 

 sidered in their Relation to the Life of Man ; including 

 a Detailed Study of some Typical Regions. By Dr. 

 Marion I. Newbigin. Pp. xi + 321. (London: Con- 

 stable and Co., Ltd., 1922.) 155. net. 



A LARGE part of Europe is again open to the 

 traveller. Dr. Newbigin, president of the 

 Geographical Section of the British Association this 

 year, does well to direct attention to the frequented 

 ways, and her book asks those who follow them to 

 adopt an appreciative outlook, casting off the insu- 

 larity bred among our western isles. Insight into the 

 relations of nature and man in Switzerland is not to 

 be gained by selecting hotels where an English chaplain 

 is on the staff. Dr. Newbigin has evidently suffered 

 in this matter, and she remarks (p. 165) that the 

 Catholic religion has the advantage " that no particular 

 form of dress is imposed upon the worshippers." Her 

 appreciation of the unconventional might have made 

 her more tolerant (pp. 1 and 163) of " the superior 

 person " who has been driven from anglicised Grindel- 

 wald to Japan or the New Zealand Alps. If she thinks 

 that these fields are reserved for the prattling millionaire, 

 let her consider Mr. Ralph Stock's exquisite little book 

 on the voyage of " The Dream Ship " (1922), and see 

 how the spirit of the Elizabethans may still carry our 

 island-folk, both male and female, across the viewless 

 seas. 



Dr. Newbigin rather overlooks the value of a con- 

 tinuous traverse of a land-surface by the pedestrian, 

 the cyclist, and the new users of highways that have 

 not been so frequented since my lord and my lady took 

 their own carriage into France. Automobilists are 

 not always mere diffusers of dust and lubrication- 

 odours ; thousands are ready to respond to a training 

 in history and geography. Dr. Newbigin conducts us 

 inevitably by railway, and it may be noted that her 

 information as to lines in the Eastern Alps is not entirely 

 up-to-date. If, moreover, she prefers Basel, with good 

 reason, as a place-name, why does she write Berne, 

 St. Gothard, and the purely English Botzen, which 

 should now, we presume, become Bolzano ? She goes 

 so far as to discuss (pp. 37 and 42) the merits of various 

 tunnels through the mountains ; these, after all, are 

 the frequented ways. The Gazette of the Cyclists' 

 Touring Club for August 1922 will show her, however, 

 that even the Arlberg road is not forsaken. Again, in 

 her essay on the Scottish Highlands, we should like to 

 hear more of the pedestrian who travels across the 

 glens as well as down them, in his attempt to realise 

 their " relation to the life of man." 

 NO. 2766, VOL. 1 10] 



The author seems carried away at times by a certain 

 vigour of self-expression, as if she had been caught in 

 the swirls of " the revolt against civilisation." On 

 p. 48 she writes, " latitude is only one of the factors 

 which influence climate," and styles this " current 

 geographical slang." Three pages on, she tilts against 

 " latent heat," surely a very innocent antagonist. 

 Again, has geographic environment moulded " the 

 ferocious individualism of the Scot " (p. 261), which 

 causes him to charge as much as 2s. 6d. for a belated 

 breakfast on a winter's day ? Is not this seeming lack 

 of hospitality to be ascribed to the advent of tourists 

 from the south, by way of Edinburgh, into the quiet 

 of his ancestral wilds ? Do we not remember how a 

 cotter's wife was on the look-out for us one morning 

 with a gift of oatcake, lest we should go hungry on a 

 twenty-mile track under the Paps of Jura ; or how a 

 poor fisherman forced a tepid meal upon us, with the 

 remark, " I should not like you to pass this house " ? 

 This is how the loneliness of moor and island have 

 really affected the Gael of the old stock, despite the 

 clan-animosities intensified by seclusion in the glens. 

 Dr. Newbigin is at her best, and thus at a high level, 

 in dealing with the influence of climate and land-forms 

 on European vegetation. Had our military organisers 

 known as much geography as is compressed into p. 55, 

 the " mediterranean climate " would not have wrecked 

 a band of gallant men sent up into the snows from 

 Salonika. 



Dr. Newbigin's photographs are a change from too 

 familiar scenes. She gives us, for example, the vine- 

 clad pergolas of Domo d' Ossola and the deforested 

 slopes above La Grave. She certainly did not reach 

 the latter spot by railway. In the Italian chapters, 

 while seeking to be moderate, she cannot conceal a 

 genuine hate of Venice ; and, when she justly charms 

 us with Ravenna, she elaborates a contrast that cannot 

 be entirely sustained. Did the Goths consciously 

 embrace the creed of Ulfilas because his homoiian views 

 provided a religion for " free men " ? We are puzzled 

 by the intricacies of p. 292, and are not going to allow 

 so good a geographer to entrap us in the maze of 

 Alexandrian controversy, or into a discussion of the 

 Virgin enthroned with angels in Sant' Apollinare of 

 Ravenna. It is more profitable to note that the 

 explanation given (p. 231) of phenomena at the Solfa- 

 tara confirms a suggestion recently made in Nature 

 (vol. 109, p. 559). 



Dr. Newbigin's reliance on the railways leads her to 

 call (p. 309) the Assisi-Foligno-Orte loop " an easy 

 route " to Rome. The alluvial infilling seems to have 

 made her forget that she is running upstream past 

 Monte Subasio, and that clever engineering was 

 required to get back from Spoleto by the gorge of 



