NOTICES OF BOOKS. 
175 
any one acquainted with the Kentish marshes to identify it. It is the history of 
the past that is presented to us — not of the remote past, indeed, but of a time before 
the railways had penetrated the region described. The most touching chapters in 
the book, throughout which pathos is by no means wanting, are those which de- 
scribes the visit of Denzil to “ the scenes of his old wanderings,” after a few years’ 
absence. 
“ The fisher folk had already begun to change like their surroundings, they 
were losing much of their peculiar dialect, and although the older members of the 
community still clung to their fanatical opinions and weird superstitions, yet they 
had to give way outwardly to the new order of things. Four short years had worked 
marvels. Den thought. . . The large old-fashioned inn at Standbeck, where 
as a boy he had gone to gaze at the golden eagles, had been converted into a big 
draper’s establishment, which was the centre of a busy street. . . Could this 
be the place where the broken jetty stood, looking always ready to be washed 
away ? A solid landing place for the steamer's had taken the place of old sea- 
walls; it was heavily timbered at the sides with huge driven piles covered with 
sea-weed tangle, where the great winkles hung thick as blackberries on a bramble 
bush ; where the great eels had twisted about visible at low water, and the crabs 
scuttled along in search of their food. . . As the railroads gave facility for 
placing product in the London markets and elsewhere, cement-works, wharves, 
and ship-yards appeared along the waterside, as though by magic, it seemed to the 
slow thinking and acting graziers and old marsh dwellers ; and in the spots where 
at one time the silence had been broken only by the cry of wild fowl, rang out the 
clink and hum of machinery, and the cling of hammers, the fowl having flitted for 
good.” 
The volume is mainly occupied with the doings of Denzil and of his two fisher- 
boy companions, ‘ Winder’ and ‘Scoot.’ As befits their race and place, they 
arc far more robust and daring than Bevis and his friends, whose exploits were 
narrated by Jefferies, and their proceedings partake more largely of adventure. 
There is, indeed, a freshening breeze throughout the book which distinguishes it 
from the other works of this writer, and brings with it “sights and sounds of 
the infinite sea.” 
Extracts fail to convey any adequate notion of this delightful volume ; as Mr. 
Dick Swiveller said of another attractive combination, it “ can’t be tasted in sips.” 
It is full of the most wholesome form of Selbornian teaching, and must take a pro- 
minent place on that shelf of books which should form part of the “ plant ” of 
every branch of the .Selborne Society. Here is a passage showing the relations be- 
tween Denzil and his “ feathered friends.” 
“ With his tame birds that he managed to keep in some spot or other — his 
feathered friends and companions — .... all their wants were anticipated ; 
he watched them night and day, and talked to them, the lads said, in their own 
language. It was certain they understood him. One large brown owl he had 
which followed him about like a dog, and watched for his coming, yelling at 
times like a feathered demon if Den remained away too long. In the dusk of 
evening he used to walk about with his wise-looking companion perched on his 
arm, free and unfettered, without one feather in his fine wings missing. The boy 
had his faults, like all other boys, but he was never known to mock at sacred 
things, or at any true professor of religion. When he grew older he used to say 
no true naturalist ever could fail to see and reverence God in His works.” 
Mr. Emerson’s Son of the Fens is a very different character, and we fear can 
hardly be accepted as an exponent of Selbornian principles. His career is traced 
in an autobiography extending from his fifth to his thirty-third year, and, so far 
as we are able to judge, gives an accurate if not a complete record of the ordinary 
life of the natives of the Norfolk fens. There are no graces of composition, and 
none of the appreciation of nature which gives such a charm to Denzil Magnier’s 
history ; but it may be said on the other hand that the picture drawn is more 
vraisetnblahle, and that, as an accurate painter of the realities of life, the “Son 
of the Fens” is more to be trusted than the “.Son of the Marshes.” Mr. 
Emerson has shown by his previous works, one of which was noticed in these 
pages (Nature Notes, 1890, p. 44) that he is well acquainted with the fen 
country, and the dialect in which Dick Windmill relates his history may be 
accepted as accurate. The footnotes help to render this intelligible to the 
