270



Review.



space allows, by photographs sent by Lieut. Delacour. At the

meeting on June 28th the Council passed a vote of condolence with

Lieut. Delacour, and we feel that bird lovers the world over will

extend to him their ready sympathy.



REVIEW.


TROPICAL WILD LIFE IN BRITISH GUIANA *


Amongst the books which come into the hands of the reviewer

there appear, at ware intervals, works of superexcellent merit, inau¬

gurating a new era of research, epoch-making volumes of zoology.

Mr. Beebee and his assistants have given us such a book.


Introduced by a foreword from Col. Roosevelt, this master¬

piece chronicles the doings of the Tropical Research Station estab¬

lished by the New York Zoological Society at Kalacoon in British

Guiana. Installed in a large two-storied house at the junction of

three great rivers, with a wild hinterland of jungle, the naturalists

set to work to explore this zoological El Dorado, and have chronicled

their results in a volume which rivals the vivid pages of Bates and

Wallace and Waterton. The book is illustrated with a profusion of

good photographs that bring the jungle to one’s very fireside, till one

almost hears the shrilling of the tree-frogs and the cries of the Macaws

in the tall mora-trees. Toucan and Trogon, Trumpeter and Tinamou,

Motmot and Macaw fill these pages, together with Doves, Fly¬

catchers, Humming-birds, and so forth, till the aviculturist reading

the record sighs in vain for the vanished population of his aviaries.


Two outstanding contributions to science are made by the

writers. First comes an account of the quaint, almost reptilian,

chick of the Hoatzin—perhaps the most interesting of all birds, with

its quadrupedal gait and its uncanny climbing performances, aided

by its fingers and toes. We see the infant Hoatzin crawding on all

fours about the nest; climbing a branch, more like a lizard than a

bird ; helplessly struggling along the ground; or swimming with wings

extended in a basin of water. Then in a section devoted to Toucans


* ‘ Tropical Wild Life in British Guiana,’ by William Beebee, G. Inness Hartley, and

Paul G. Howes, with an Introduction by Col. Theodore Roosevelt. London :

Witherby and Co., 826, High Holborn. Pp. 504, 4 coloured plates and 140

other illustrations. Price 12s. 6d. net.



