1906. 
Revieivs. 
SPORT AND BIOLOGY 
Recreations of a Naturalist. By James Edmund IIarting. 
Pp. xvi., 343. With eiglity-one illustrations. Loudon : T. Fisher 
Uuwin. 1906. Price 15^-. net. 
The versatility of Mr. Harting's pen is well exemplified in his latest 
collection of essays, in which he touches in a pleasantly instructive 
manner on a number of the heterogeneous topics with which his ex- 
periences in out-door life and his extensive reading have brought him 
into contact. From the fascinations of falconry and the delights of deer- 
stalking Mr. Harting readily passes ou to describe the pleasures of an 
ornithological ramble through the marshes in May, or of a day's punting 
in the ' reedy labyrinths " of the Norfolk Broads. The author's special 
interest in the various old-fashioned devices for taking or killing wild 
creatures appears in his ver}- readable article on the Pyrenean method of 
netting Woodpigeons, and still more strongly in that of the now much- 
decayed Wheatear-trapping industry that formerly brought such profits 
to the shepherds of the Sussex Downs. From another article we find 
that Mr. Harting believes in the fact of the Adder's taking her young for 
safety into her mouth, though a majority of English zoologists still 
doubt the reliability of the evidence for this habit. Taken all round, 
the volume is one that may be read with combined pleasure and profit ; 
and it has also the merit of containing some excellent and dainty illus- 
trations. On the special province of the Irish Naturalist the author 
hardly attempts to touch, and where he does so he shows that his read- 
ing on that subject has been singularly desultor}'. For instance, there is 
a chapter on the question what is the true vShamrock ; but the principal 
recent authority referred to on that question is Messrs. Britten and 
Holland's " Directory of Plant Names" (1878-1886) ; and though there is 
a reference to Mr. Colgan's statement in the " Flora of County Dublin " 
that TrifoliujH repens and T. dubiiun are both worn extensively on St. 
Patrick's Day and in almost equal proportions, Mr. Harting has 
evidently not seen Mr. Colgan's important articles in the Irish Naturalist 
for August, 1892, and August, 1893, in which the subject was much 
more fully gone into than would have been in keeping with the plan of 
a county flora. Mr. Colgan's Royal Society of Antiquaries paper'' on the 
lyiterature of the Shamrock would also have furnished Mr. Harting with 
much interesting matter of which readers of his book will now unhappily 
lose the benefit. 
C. B. M. 
1 lournal, R. Soc. Ant. Ireland, 1896, pp. 211-226, 349-361. 
