REVIEWS AND EXCHANGES 
29 
You are fully awake upon these Downs, it is no place for the 
sleepy-eyed or the sluggard. Count the butterfly- life resting 
amongst the herbage, note the colouration — blue, yellow, red, 
brown, white. Walk along quietly afterwards and observe the 
coquettish creatures as they fly up at your approach, only to 
settle again a few paces away. 
The Bird-life ! Yes, seawards you may see various Gulls 
winging their way over the surface of the water. Over Beachy 
Head the clamour of sea-birds reaches the ear, but unless you 
seek an early grave, do not wander too close to this rugged 
headland, even though you chance to be a most enthusiastic 
Field Naturalist determined to accurately record all you see and 
hear. 
Bird-life in August is not conspicuous, but one cannot fail to 
notice on the Downs the number of Meadow Pipits, Green- 
finches, Yellow Buntings, Linnets (with such rosy-red breasts), 
Skylarks, Rooks, and Jackdaws, Common Buntings uttering 
their wheezy little songs, Stonechats busy feeding their interest- 
ing chicks, Wheatears running along the springy turf before 
returning to their winter home, a Kestrel hovering aloft, and in 
the marshes along the valleys dapper little Ringed Plovers, 
Moorhens, Coots, Pied Wagtails, Redshanks, Sandpipers, and 
wild fowl. 
Snakes are plentiful on the Downs — we saw several Grass 
Snakes — and so, too, are Rabbits, Hares, and Foxes. 
In concluding our brief survey we can but re-echo the words 
of Richard Jefferies, who wrote thus about these very Downs : 
“ Discover some excuse to be up there always, to search for 
stray mushrooms — they will be stray, for the crop is gathered 
extremely early in the morning — or to make a list of flowers and 
grasses — to do anything, and, if not, go always without any 
pretext. Lands of gold have been found, and lands of spices and 
precious merchandise, but this is the land of health.” 
W. Percival Westell, F.R.H.S., M.B.O.U. 
REVIEWS AND EXCHANGES. 
The Zoological Society of London. By Henry Scherren, F.Z.S. Cassell and Co. 
Price 30s. net. 
Unless, perhaps, we except the late Andrew Murray’s “Book of the Royal 
Horticultural Society,” we do not know of any British scientific society which 
can boast of so sumptuous a record of its birth and progress as this. As its 
second title runs, it is a sketch of the foundation and development of the Society, 
and the story of its farm, museum, gardens, menagerie and library ; and told, as 
it is, largely in the words of official documents, the proofs moreover having been 
read by Dr. Chalmers Mitchell, the work may be taken as fully authorised. Mr. 
Scherren’s name is a guarantee for its careful accuracy, especially on the more 
strictly scientific side, the identity of the animals to which reference is made. 
The twelve coloured plates of different parts of the Society’s Gardens are fine 
specimens of printing ; and there are also fifty black and white plates of verv 
varied interest. We are permitted by the publishers to reproduce one of these, 
