212 
NATURE NOTES. 
and during the night their legs become icebound, and early in 
the morning the Indians are able to capture them before the sun 
has melted the ice. 
The vicunas — animals allied to the llama and alpaca — make 
long journeys to this lake for water to drink. They travel in lots 
of six in a row, the old male going first and the others follow on 
the way to the lake. Indians erect a few loose stones into a kind 
of hut, and if they pass near the Indians shoot the third or fourth 
vicuna. Then the others all stop and look at it, and then 
another one is shot, but not the old male. They are then 
skinned, and the wool from the skin is sold at very high prices. 
In a very short time condors may be seen flying about, sup- 
posed be to 20,000 feet high, and without a quiver in the wing ; 
and when all is clear they come down and eat the remains of the 
animal. In this valley the crude borate is found a foot below ; 
a hard substance like sand and salt is collected and sent to 
England to be manufactured into borax and boracic acid. For 
many miles round there is not a blade of grass or leaf to be seen 
of any kind — in fact, going west, towards the Pacific, we rode 
about seventy miles without a sign of vegetation of any kind, and 
for some days we travelled without seeing any animal or insect 
life of any sort. 
Arthur Robottom. 
SOME BOOKS ON NATURAL HISTORY.- 
We ought perhaps to begin with an apolog)- for the title we have chosen, for 
the author of the book which stands last on the list tells us that the term “ Natural 
History ” is generally discarded by modern writers in favour of “ Natural Science.” 
We must, however, confess to a fondness for an old friend, and to a hope that it 
may not disappear from our vocabulary, nor the kind of observation which it 
properly designates from our practice. 
The four works now before us serve very well to indicate the nature of the 
domain which at the present day the observer of nature seeks to claim for his 
own. That which we have named first. Lux Natura, is natural history in its 
most sublimated form, dealing with metaphysical rather than biological topics, 
and being devoted to a demonstration of a system of theism so abstruse that we 
dare not venture to summarise it. It may be sufficient to present our readers 
with the following sample of its method : “At the meeting of two persons 
through whom similar etheric rays pass they would at once feel that they were 
so sympathetically attached as to have the same thoughts in common. The 
ether in the one person, being similar in tenuity to the ether in the other, would 
at once sympathetically associate itself with it ; the two ethers would become 
* Lux Naiura, Nerve System of the Universe: a new demonstration of an 
old law; by David Sinclair (London: Elliot Stock, pp. iS8.) Biological 
Lectures and Addresses; by the late Arthur !Milnes Marshall (London: David 
Nutt, pp. viii. , 363). Po 7 ids and Rock Pools, with hints on collecting for and 
management of the micro-aquarium, by Henry Scherren (Religious Tract Society, 
pp. 20S, price 2s. 6d.). Industries of Animals, Contemporary Science Series, 
from the French of Frederick Houssay (London : Walter Scott, Ltd., pp. 258, 
with 44 illustrations, price 3s. 6d.). 
