REVIEWS AND EXCHANGES 
57 
New York Zoological Society in 1898, on “The Destruction of Our Birds and 
Mammals.” It is startling to read Mr. Hornaday’s confident prediction that the 
extermination of the buffalo {Bos americauus), which diminished from 500,000 in 
1880 to under 400 in 1883, will be followed by that of the prong-horned antelope 
{Antilocapra americana), the mountain sheep (Ovis moutana), the mountain goat 
{Haploceros montanus), the “ grizzly,” the beaver, the elk, and the mule deer ; 
but we can readily accept his classification of the chief causes of decrease in bird- 
life as “ so-called sportsmen,” boys who shoot, plume-hunters, the clearing of 
timber, egg-collecting, chiefly by small boys, the English sparrow, and Italians and 
others, who devour song birds. Mr. Ilornaday’s suggestions on this subject are 
(l) “ Prohibit all egg-collecting, except under license ; (2) Provide for the 
extermination of the English sparrow ; (3) Prohibit the .sale of dead game ; (4) 
Prohibit the killing or capture of wild birds, and of quadrupeds, other than 
fur-bearing animals, for commercial purposes ; (5) Prohibit all spring shooting ; 
(6) Prohibit the carrying or using of a gun without a license ; (7) For three 
years prohibit the killing or capture of any birds, except certain birds of prey ; 
(8) At the end of three years, restrict by law the number of game birds that may 
be taken by a single individual in one day.” These suggestions have been, in the 
main, adopted by the League of American Sportsmen. The author gives useful 
guidance as to the attracting of song-birds by planting suitable shrubs, providing 
nesting-boxes, winter feeding, and protecting the birds from cats and other natural 
enemies, as to bird and arbor days, &c., and we cannot, we think, do better 
than transcribe the following hint to Audubon and kindred Societies: — “To 
compel people desirous of joining one of these societies to write a letter and 
expend from five to ten cents in order to have his membership fee of twenty-five 
cents or one dollar reach the proper parties, is very poor business policy. In 
every town one or more book-stores and other business houses will be found 
willing to receive dues and issue membership cards. Display in this place the 
beautiful coloured chart of twenty-six common birds published by the Massa- 
chusetts Audubon Society, and on a placard attached to the chart invite people 
to join. On a table near the chart place some circulars explaining the purpose 
of the Society. Public libraries would also be good places for this missionary 
work. There can be no possible objection to this method, which is employed by 
all kinds of respectable business concerns. The time of people who are 
interested in such work is generally of some value, and they cannot afford to 
spend two hours in carrying fifty cents to an out-of-the-way private residence.” 
This is a sample of the practical character of the work. 
Notes on Sport and Travel. By George Henry Kingsley, M.D., F.L..S. ll^ith 
a Memoir by his daughter, Mary PI. Kingsley. Macmillan & Co. Price 
8s. 6d. net. 
The world is glad to hear anything fresh of the Kingsleys, of Charles, always 
to us the author of “W.ater Babies,” of Henry, author of “ Geoffrey Hamlyn,” or of 
him hitherto known to most as the Doctor of the Earl and the Doctor partnership. 
This anything is still more acceptable when presented to us in that racy style 
which the Doctor’s daughter. Miss Mary Kingsley, has made her own, and we 
are tolerably certain that most readers will agree in thinking the first part of this 
volume in which Miss Kingsley, with the help of many letters, tells the story of 
her father’s life, by far the best. There is a good deal more about sport in the 
book than about travel — out of beaten tracks, that is — and, though Dr. Kingsley 
occasionally refuses the name sportsman and reprobates mere wholesale slaughter, 
the “ let’s-go-out-and-kill-something ” attitude of mind is apparently prominent. 
“ I pray you,” says Miss Kingsley, “do not think George Kingsley was mainly 
a dreamer with a volcanic temper ; for in his many-sided nature there were other- 
characteristics — an infinite gentleness with weak things, a vigorous hatred for 
those who inflicted suffering unnecessarily on man or beast, that came from a 
sympathy which made him feel the extent of that suffering. This may seem 
a strange claim to make for a man who was .so keen a sportsman, but it is an 
essential part of the true sportsman. There is as fundamental a difference be- 
tween a true sportsman and a man who loves inflicting death or suffering from 
sheer love of cruelty, as there is between either of these and the nervous lady who 
