194 
NATURE NOTES. 
SHORT NOTICES OF BOOKS. 
Whatever just cause agriculturists may have for discontent with the recent 
summer, pedestrians at any rat can have little but what is good to say for it. 
Town folk have, during the prevalent fine weather, had ample opportunities for 
rambling in the country, and have doubtless taken full advantage of them. Those 
who prefer to be guided straight to the prettiest scenery near London, and hate 
wasting time in having to find it for themselves, have probably been following out 
the admirable walks described by Mr. Walker Miles, in his Field-path Rambles 
through West Kent and among the Surrey Hills, to which the attention of 
Selbornians has frequently been called in these pages. Those assiduous pedes- 
trians who have more or less exhausted the country exploited by Mr. Miles, 
will have noted with pleasure the appearance of another of his little guides, in- 
troducing a fresh series of walks entitled the Surrey Hedgerows. This, the 
ninth part. Round Croydon, costs sixpence, and describes in a practical and lucid 
manner some hundred miles of delightful rambles over the hills and valleys 
between Shirley and Caterham on the east, and Banstead and Sutton on the west. 
The district is one which is easily and cheaply reached, and will fully repay the 
attention bestowed upon it by those who are at present unacquainted with it ; and 
no better guide to it could be desired than that which Mr. Miles has placed in the 
hands of the public. There is, however, a cons ricuous error in the book which 
has escaped revision. On pages i and 23 the first section of Route 2 is stated to 
be 95 miles long, although as shown by the text it is really only 5^ miles. 
A. G. 
We have too long put off noticing Miss Isabel Fry’s delightful little book 
Uninitiated (Osgood, Alcllvaine & Co., 2s. 6d.), in the hope that we should be 
able to give it the detailed review which it merits. This has resulted in our 
leaving it unnoticed, a defect which we must supply, however insufficiently. 
There are comparatively few who, when they arrive at maturity, are able to recall 
the impressions of their childhood so clearly as to convey to their readers a sense 
of reality; but Miss Fry is one of these. We have read nothing so realistic — to 
employ a much abused word — since Stevenson’s Child’s Garden of Verses. It 
may be asked whether the book appeals in any special manner to Selbornians. 
Certainly it does : it abounds in passages which show the keenest appreciation of 
Nature — especially human nature — descriptions of trees and gardens, and evi- 
dences of affections for animals and plants. Moreover the book is charmingly got 
up, both in print and cover. When it runs to a second edition. Miss Fry must 
make one correction. “ Eucomus,” which figures so prominently in one of the 
sketches, should be “ Eucomis.” 
Mr. H. K. Swann, in his preface to Nature in Acadie (London, Bale), tells us 
that his little book is “ not intended to be in any sense a scientific work.” It 
consists of ten pleasantly written chapters, telling us what he saw during his stay in 
Nova Scotia, in which the “attempts at word-picturing” do not seem to us as 
satisfactory as the observations of birds which are scattered through the pages. 
It begins with a poem, addressed to Thoreau, from which we infer that Mr. Swann 
would be wiser to stick to prose. The price strikes us as excessive — 3s. fid. for 82 
pages ! 
We have more than once had the opportunity of noticing works by Mr. J. W. 
Tutt, who, in his Rambles in Alpine Valleys, gives us another of those chatty 
accounts of the objects in various branches of natural history — more especially 
entomology — which he has met with in his rambles. This time he takes us 
further afield, to the Italian side of the Mont Blanc range, where he had the 
good fortune to spend a holiday in the summer of 1894. One of the best features 
in Mr. Tutt’s books is the admirable indexes which he supplies : so full, indeed, 
that the elaborate table of contents might be dispensed with. 
Messrs. Macmillan & Co. send us a dainty little book. From a New England 
Hillside, by Mr. William Potts, who is evidently a follower of Mr. John 
Burroughs. It is a year’s diary kept in a quiet country village — a diary devoted 
mainly to records of flowers and birds, interspersed with numerous and not too 
