i6 
NATURE NOTES 
serving of being chronicled. She allows herself to be nursed in 
any position like a doll, especially by children, to whom she dis- 
plays great fussiness, though generally unaccustomed to them, 
and insists on kissing in a very unmistakable manner any of her 
friends she particularly favours. Muff is the six-months-old 
kitten of a very petted and carefully tended mother, and, should 
her offspring eventually have the same advantages, there is no 
doubt but that they will rival in intelligence and devotion any 
member of the canine tribe. 
Annie Hancock Meadowcroft. 
The Hillock, Court Oak Road, 
Harhorne, Birmingham. 
REVIEWS AND EXCHANGES. 
Oil?- Rarer British Breeding Birds ; their Nests, Eggs, and Summer Haunts. 
By Richard Kearton, I'.Z.S. Illustrated from photographs by C. Kearton. 
Cassell & Co. Price 7s. 6d. 
The excellent work of -the Messrs. Kearton needs no introduction now, and 
those who were present at our last annual meeting will be glad to have another 
volume illustrated with their beautiful photographs of birds in their native haunts. 
The present volume contains only some 150 pages, but no less than seventy of 
these are whole-page illustrations ; and as these comprise nearly sixty species not 
represented in “British Birds’ Nests,” by the same author and artist, they go far 
to complete the list. The highly-surfaced paper upon which these delicate half- 
toned plates are printed makes us unable to reproduce any of them with justice in 
Nature Notes, but we can assure any bird-lover that he will be glad to have 
added this volume to his library. 
The Trail of the Sandhill Stag, and sixty drawings. By Ernest Seton- 
Thompson. David Nutt. Price 3s. 6d. nett. 
When, about a year ago, we read “Wild Animals I have Known,” we came 
to the conclusion that in Mr. Seton-Thompson Manitoba possesses a Richard 
Jefferies, with the additional gift of a pencil as facile, true to nature and charming 
as is his pen. The present work contains only one short story, but it is as 
fascinating as any in the previous volume. In subject it forms an American 
fendant to the Hon. Mr. Fortescue’s “ Story of the Red Deer,” and it is difficult 
to imagine anyone who has read these tw'o beautiful books appreciatively ever 
again taking part in stag-hunting. We are shown how a young hunter learns to 
realise the nature of his “vile success — a beautiful, glorious, living creature tor- 
tured into a loathsome mass of carrion,” until, in his final apostrophe to the noble 
buck, he says, “ Go now, without fear, to range the piney hills ; never more shall 
I follow your trail with the wild wolf rampant in my heart. Less and less as I 
grow do I see in your race mere flying marks or butcher-meat.” Once or twice 
it occurs to us that Mr. Seton-Thompson seems to strive after a preciosity of 
style which we like less than his simpler narrative ; but this is, perhaps, the almost 
inevitable result of the attempt to clothe so slight a story of a hunt with sympa- 
thetic sentiment. 
Journals and Papers of Chatmey Maples, D.D., F.R.G.S., late Bishop of 
Likoma, Lake Nyasa, Africa. Edited by Ellen Maples. Longmans, 
Green & Co. Price 6s. fid. 
Those who read with pleasure the “Life and Letters” of the late Bishop 
Maples, will be glad of this collection of his journals and papers on his work in 
Africa. From our point of view the most interesting are “ Papers from Newala,” 
reprinted from “ Central Africa,” which contains a good account of the mammals 
and birds, and the paper on the centre of his own diocese, “ Likoma : an Island 
