224 
NATURE NOTES 
treatment or more natural causes, this animal seems to lack all 
the noble traits of the dog, being even lower in its morals than 
the pariah of Indian villages. It is the only true wild dog in 
the world, and Mr. Hudson compares it to the Aguard of South 
America. 
REVIEWS AND EXCHANGES. 
A Year wilh Nature. By W. Percival Westell, M.B.O.U. Henry J. Drane. 
Price los. 6d. 
This handsome volume consists of agreeably written sketches, mostly relating 
to birds, by a well-known member of the Selborne Society and contributor to 
these pages. They are arranged according to the months of the year, and include 
well-illustrated studies of birds’ beaks, tails and feet. The book contains more 
than 170 illustrations, most of them occupying whole pages, including twenty-two 
from photographs, by Mr. G. W. Webster, of those e.xcellent bird-groups in the 
Grosvenor Museum at Chester, which we owe to the taxidermistic skill of Mr. 
Robert Newstead, the curator, and more than seventy, chiefly representing rural 
landscape in Hertfordshire, from the studio of Mr. J. T. Newman, of Berkham- 
sted. We should have liked to reproduce some of these, but our paper does not 
enable us to do justice to these exquisitely soft half-tone blocks. Half-a-guinea 
appears to us remarkably cheap for so attractive a presentation volume. 
Problems of Evolution. By F. W. Headley. Duckworth and Co. Price 8s. net. 
We regret that our space does not permit us to do justice to this important 
work. The author is already favourably known in the biological world by his 
“Structure and Life of Birds,” and if, perhaps, less at home in palaeontology 
and scantily furnished with illustrations derived from the vegetable kingdom, the 
present work shows him to be most thoroughly equipped zoologically. The 
whole work is eminently controversial, being an elaborate defence of the Neo- 
Darwinism of Weismann as against Neo-Lamarckism. Mr. Headley is, however, 
no mere copyist or populariser of his master’s work, but argues his own views 
with a strenuous appeal to well-selected facts. Though an introductory chapter 
is prefixed to explain Darwinism for “ the general reader,” the work is not easy 
reading. The modern problem of “ Isolation” is discussed) and half the work 
deals with human evolution, concluding with a chapter on “ the great unpro- 
gressive people,” which, however, the writer assures us, was written before the 
Boxer rising. The illustrations were hardly necessary and certainly need not 
have entailed the printing of the whole work on such heavily glazed paper. As 
it is the volume weighs over 350Z. avoirdupois, a serious drawback. Mr. Headley 
has given us a work with which up-to-date biologists will have to reckon ; but we 
wish that he, as an instructed naturalist and no mere a prioi'i speculator, would 
give us a comprehensive handbook of modern biology for the general reader, not 
a laboratory guide or “cram” text-book, but somewhat on the lines of Dr. 
Wallace’s “Darwinism.” 
Raggylug the Cottontail Rabbit and other Animal Stories. By Ernest Seton- 
Thompson. With pictures by the author. David Nutt. Price 3s. 6d. 
These altogether delightful stories need no introduction, for every lover of 
Nature ought to recognise them as selected from “ Wild Animals I have known.” 
Some readers who do not yet know the larger book may rejoice in having these 
four tales in a cheap form, but they will inevitably, like Oliver Twist, ask for 
more. 
Shakespeare’s Greenwood. By George Morley. David Nutt. Price 5s. nett. 
This dainty little buckram-bound volume consists of essays on the language, 
superstitions, customs, folk-lore, birds, trees and poets of Warwickshire, with 
