ilooft jBtetoa anti 3&etrietDs 



North and South: Notes on the Natural 

 History of a Summer Camp and a 

 Winter Home. By Stanton Davis 

 Kirkham. G. P. Putnam's Sons. New 

 York and London, 1913. 8vo. viii + 

 286 pages. 48 half-tones from photo- 

 graphs. 



As an heir, in common with other nature 

 lovers, to such part of the earth's surface 

 as opportunity permits him to claim under 

 a "rambler's lease," Mr. Kirkham writes 

 here of two quite unlike bits of his heri- 

 tage, — one "a summer camp on the shore 

 of Canandaigua Lake," the other "a 

 winter home in South Carolina." "If I 

 succeed in reflecting," he says, "the spirit 

 of the Lake Country of New York and of 

 the Coastal Plain of the South, in so doing 

 I shall bring their salient features together 

 for comparison, remembering that they 

 are but different parts of one and the same 

 estate in Nature." 



Of the fauna and flora of these two 

 localities the author evidently has more 

 than a passing knowledge. Birds, par- 

 ticularly, attract him; "Indeed," he writes, 

 ''the world is a trifling affair, easily for- 

 gotten when one is absorbed in the society 

 of birds," and of them he writes with the 

 knowledge of a technical ornithologist and 

 the sentiment of a poet; and through 

 descriptions, both objective and sub- 

 jective, there runs a vein of introspective 

 philosophy which clearly raises his book 

 above many worthy but painful efforts 

 to give form to emotions which struggle 

 vainly for effective utterance. 



It is natural that writing, the success of 

 which depends so much on not what is 

 seen, but how it is seen and what impres- 

 sion it creates, should reveal rather more 

 than less of the personality of the writer, 

 through which the reader sees whatever 

 he may describe, whether it be a flower, a 

 mountain, or a bird's song. Reading thus 

 Mr. Kirkham's book, we wish we could 

 detect a somewhat more tolerant spirit 

 toward those who, lacking his insight, or 

 imagination, are still, according to their 

 lights, drawn toward the same altar at which 



he worships. "Ornithology," he writes, "like 

 everything else, will be just as common- 

 place as the mind that pursues it. When 

 one has counted all the birds he has seen 

 in a day, 'collected' some eggs, and made 

 his uninspired record, he has merely 

 reduced the subject to the level of his 

 own thinking, and might as well, it may 

 be, have devoted his time to the hens." 

 All of which proves, if it proves anything, 

 that Mr. Kirkham's experience with 

 "uninspired" bird students has not 

 brought him into touch with those who, 

 far from reducing "the subject" to their 

 level, are, as bird lovers, so immeasurably 

 raised beyond the level of their normal 

 existence that they seem, in fact, to be 

 two persons in one. 



To describe, no matter how truly and 

 eloquently, the beauties of nature and the 

 charms of bird-life, and then to assure us 

 that these are only for the elect, is dis- 

 couraging to most of us, to say the least. 

 — F. M. C. 



Sand Dunes and Salt Marshes. By 

 Charles Wendell Townsend, M.D., 

 Boston. Dana, Estes & Co., 1913, 

 i2mo. 311 pages. 91 half-tones, 2 

 line cuts. 



"For the last twenty-years," Dr. 

 Townsend writes, "I have spent most of 

 my vacations at Ipswich, and have made 

 brief visits there as often as I could at 

 other seasons, while almost twenty years 

 before that the birds of this Massachu- 

 setts coast began to claim my attention." 



It is not alone of birds that Dr. Town- 

 send writes, the dunes and marshes them- 

 selves, their vegetation, mammals, and 

 characteristic forms in lower groups are 

 also treated. The result is a manual of 

 shore and marsh life which avoiding formal 

 presentation, is eminently readable and 

 informing. As its author well says: "The 

 formation of sand dunes and salt marshes 

 is much the same the world over;" and 

 his volume has, therefore, far more than 

 local value. Particularly should it appeal 



(378) 



