HA R D WICKE ' S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



29 



botany, zoology, &c, all come in for notice by Mr. 

 Thomson, who discourses on New Guinea, both 

 enthusiastically, and optimistically. It is a delightful 

 book to read, as all its readers will allow. 



The Naturalist 011 the River Amazons, by Henry 

 Walter Bates. With a memoir of the author by 

 Edward Clodd (London : John Murray). This is a 

 r;print of the unabridged edition of this famous book, 

 published nearly thirty years ago. It ranks with 

 Darwin's " Voyage of the Beagle " in its fascinating 

 originality, and capacity of observation ; and reads 

 with a charm that would put any but a leading novel 

 into the shade. Never before was the animal and 



distinguished naturalist is powerfully and sympatheti- 

 cally written by Mr. Edward Clodd, and runs to 

 nearly a hundred pages. The frontispiece is a highly 

 artistic photograph of the author, taken at its best, 

 the beloved face seamed with scores of lines of hard- 

 ship and thought. The get-up of the book, paper, 

 printing, binding, and illustrations, renders it a 

 fitting monument to one of the most modest, most 

 learned, and most original of the brilliant gallery cf 

 modern British naturalists. 



The Field Club. (Elliot Stock, 62, Paternoster 

 Row, E.C.) This is the annual volume of a capital 

 magazine of general natural history, and edited, 



Fig. 19. — Interior of Primeval Forest on the Amazons. (From new edition of Bates' "Naturalist on the Amazons." 



vegetable life of the tropics so vividly and carefully 

 portrayed, for its distinguished author had a powerful 

 imagination, as well as a photographic eye for all 

 details. We feel as if we had travelled amid the scenes 

 as we conclude chapter after chapter ; and when the 

 writer of this brief notice first rambled in tropic 

 forests, they appeared quite familiar, thanks to the 

 impression made by " The Naturalist on the 

 Amazons," many years before. It was in this work 

 that the doctrine of " Mimicry " was first suggested, 

 and supported by a multitude of facts. For eleven 

 years Mr. Bates lived and wandered in the en- 

 chanted land he so vigorously describes, collecting, 

 observing, and noting facts. The memoir of the 



moreover, by the Rev. Theodore Wood, F.E.S. It 

 contains some very interesting articles, among the 

 foremost of which may be mentioned "The Wild 

 Horse, Ancient and Modern." This paper goes 

 back to Neolithic and Palaeolithic times. "Bird 

 Life of the Norfolk Broads" brings out the keen 

 ornithological observation of the author, the Rev. 

 H. Bird, M.A. ; "Some Fragments of Geological 

 History," by G. W. Bulman, M.A., B.Sc. ; and " Bio- 

 logical Recreations," by R. Lawtor Roberts, M.D., 

 are well-written papers. As a volume, the " Field 

 Naturalist " is a very interesting one. It makes a 

 capital gift-book, being printed on good paper, and 

 well bound. 



