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NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS. 



Man and Nature on Tidal Waters. By Arthur H. Patterson. 



Methuen & Co. 



This is the fourth volume written hy Mr. Patterson on the 

 fauna of his native district which he knows so well ; in fact, he 

 has now become the natural historian of East Norfolk. The 

 present volume, however, differs from its predecessors in being 

 mainly devoted to reminiscences of those humble folk who, 

 though born naturalists and sportsmen, know it not, and choose 

 to acquire a barely living wage by occupations which link them 

 with nature and the pursuit and familiarity of animal life. 

 These somewhat primitive and peculiar people, who might well 

 be called Homo breydonensis, are in many pursuits fast dying 

 out, their occupation gone, and the survivors themselves almost 

 relegated to the " scrap-heap." Mr. Patterson has had a long 

 personal experience of this hardy Yarmouth race — smelters, 

 shrimpers, eel-fishers, gunners, mussel-dredgers, trawlers, and 

 mackerel and herring catchers — and his reminiscences of them, 

 and the statements he has obtained from them make this book 

 a very " human document." Interspersed with the yarns of 

 these delightful waifs and strays — who belong to the environ- 

 ment as much as the other animal life — are many bionomical 

 observations of both bird and fish, told with that simplicity of 

 fact which only long familiarity inspires. How much more of 

 this first-hand knowledge is probably buried with these rough 

 naturalists who neither understood themselves nor were recog- 

 nized by others ! 



Mr. Patterson has done his work well ; if this volume is 

 perhaps the least purely zoological of his series, in a literary 

 sense it is by far the best. We commenced his book in the early 

 evening ; it held us, and we went to bed that night far beyond 

 our usual hour. We know these tidal waters well ; fifty years 

 ago we first handled a gun, and that on Breydon ; and though 

 for many years the wild district has become to us only as a 

 memory, these pages have reproduced the old scenes, the animal 

 life and the old human characteristics. It is not every writer 

 who can do this with success : Mr. Patterson's books are as 

 representative of Yarmouth as is the Herring. 



