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NATURE NOTES. 
Our Common Birds and How to Know Them , by John B. Grant. London: 
Gay and Bird, 6s. 
Delagoa Bay : its Natives and Natural History , by Rose Monteiro. London : 
George Philip, 9s. 
Forty Years in a Moorland Parish , by the Rev. J. C. Atkinson. London : 
Macmillan, Ss. 6d. net. We hope to notice this admirable work at length in our 
next issue. 
The Last of the Giant-Killers, or the Exploits of Sir Jack of Danby Dale, by 
the Rev. J. C. Atkinson. London : Macmillan, 4s. 6d. 
Also specimens of Natural History wall-pictures from S.P.C.K., and Messrs. 
Cassell & Co. 
SELBORN1ANA. 
Scottish Rights of Way. — There has been, as many of our readers 
know, an epidemic of rights of way raging during the past summer in the 
counties of Forfar, Aberdeen, and Perth, where the complaint might be better 
described as endemic. Forfarshire is, perhaps, the focus of such outbreaks. We 
are glad to be able to announce that the Reekie Linn case has been amicably 
settled ; but an action is pending in regard to the right of way through Kelly Den, 
a beautiful spot near Arbroath. The tutors of the infant Earl of Dalhousie have 
maintained the action of their tenant (a Mr. Blakelock) in barring access to a 
path through Kelly Den, and a Committee numbering among its members the 
Provost (unofficially) and other influential burghers of Arbroath, has taken up 
the cause of the public right. Kelly Den is a place of botanical interest as well 
as a favourite resort of the inhabitants of the neighbouring town, and the issue of 
the action will be waited for with widespread interest. Perhaps, meanwhile, we 
may be permitted to express regret, whatever the legal right may be, that the 
name of Dalhousie should appear in an action of this kind, since the public spirit 
and generosity of the late Earl were widely known and even more widely 
exhibited. 
Spreading tile Light. — Mr. W. J. Franklin writes from Birmingham 
“Will you kindly allow me to inform my fellow members how I endeavour to 
spread the principles of our Society. Although, unfortunately, I have but recently 
heard of the Selborne Society, I have been from my boyhood a devoted lover of 
nature, and as a matter of course an equally enthusiastic rambler, and on Saturday 
afternoons I provide myself with a bottle of good paste and a brush, and paste 
our leaflets and notices on gate posts, telegraph poles, outhouses, or any convenient 
place ; I also give them to children or any persons I meet. I feel sure that many 
persons who are destructive from want of thought may be led to reflect and act on 
our suggestions by this means, and I hope that others may be induced to do the 
same, so that our influence may be exercised in the haunts of the flowers and 
birds we wish to protect.” 
Mosses. — “ Meek creatures — the first mercy of the earth, veiling with hushed 
softness its dintless rocks ; creatures full of pity, covering with strange and tender 
honour the scarred disgrace of ruin, laying quiet finger on the trembling stones to 
teach them rest. No words, that I know of, will say what these mosses are. 
None are delicate enough, none perfect enough, none rich enough. How is one 
to tell of the rounded bosses of furred and beaming green, the starred divisions of 
rubied bloom, fine-filmed as if the rock spirits could spin porphyry as we do glass 
— the traceries of intricate silver and fringes of amber, lustrous, arborescent, 
burnished through every fibre into fitful brightness and glossy traverses of silken 
change, yet all subdued and pensive and framed for simplest, sweetest offices of 
grace. They will not be gathered, like the flowers, for chaplet or love-token ; 
but of these the wild bird will make its nest, and the wearied child his pillow.” — 
Buskin's Modern Painters. 
