SHORT NOTICES OF BOOKS. 
237 
and Wrongs. It is not a school book, but is full of useful hints and interesting 
anecdotes, and is very suitable for elder children, and indeed for all who keep dogs. 
Perhaps it is a little late to notice a book called How to Enjoy a Holiday 
(Unicorn Press, 211, Gray’s Inn Road, is.), in which “ Nestor” and “ Mentor” 
give certain hints and suggestions on this subject. There is ample room for such 
hints, as anyone who has ever mixed in a “ Bank Holiday ” crowd will allow, but 
the authors are rather over the heads of “the masses,” who, moreover, would 
probably not take advice, however good, which came to them in the form of 
literature. The Selborne Society is spoken of with approval, and Miss Atkin- 
son’s Barmouth address — to which we gave considerable space in our August 
number — is quoted. Altogether it is an excellent little book, which would, we 
think, have stood a better chance of finding a public had it been issued through 
some recognised publisher. 
The Haslemere Natural History Society has issued in pamphlet form (price 
6d.) a “ Record of Lectures and Addresses” delivered during 1895. These deal 
with a great variety of subjects, some of which, such as “ Our Free Press,” seem 
hardly to come within the scope of the Society. There is a characteristic paper 
by Mr. Grant Allen on “Swallows and House Martins,” and Mr. N. E. Brown 
contributes an interesting essay on “ Our British Wild Flowers.” 
The Official Guide to the Noriuich Castle Museum (Jarrold, Norwich) is a 
wonderful sixpennyworth. It contains nearly two hundred well illustrated pages, 
devoted for the most part to a description of the excellent collection of birds 
contained in the Museum. The name of the author, Mr. Thomas Southwell, 
F.Z. S., is sufficient guarantee that the book is as accurate as it is attractive. 
“Consul ” was certainly, as the title of the little book about him assures us, a 
“remarkable Chimpanzee,” but why he should also be styled “the Missing 
Link” we do not quite understand ; nor, apparently, does Mr. Frank Roper, the 
author of his memoirs. Consul was for about a year and a-half one of the 
attractions of Belle Vue Zoological Gardens, Manchester, and this account of 
him, which is suitably illustrated, is well worth the sixpence at which it is priced 
by its publishers, Messrs. Abel & Heywood, of Manchester. 
The Book of British Hawk-Moths, a Popular and Practical Handbook for 
Lepidopterists, by W. J. Lucas, B.A. (London, Upcott Gill, 1895, pp. v., 157). 
Among the numerous books on British butterflies and moths which are continually 
issuing from the press, the pretty little work before us demands a passing notice. 
It deals only with the Sphingidce, or typical hawk-moths proper, of which we 
have but seventeen species in England, and some even of these are scarcely more 
than occasional visitors. The book is, however, partly extended to its present 
size by detailed instructions for collecting, preserving, and breeding Lepidoptera, 
whether specially applicable to the Sphingidce or not. The work is illustrated by 
numerous woodcuts, and the insects themselves are represented as larvce, pupa 
and imago, on page plates or folding plates. These illustrations, though un- 
coloured, are very characteristic and well executed, though not all of equal merit ; 
in the last plate the name of the two Bee Hawk-moths have been reversed by 
some accident. 
W. F. K. 
Mr. Alfred H. Miles is well known as a compiler of readers and reciters, but it 
is to be regretted that he .should have turned his attention to natural history. His 
Natural History in Anecdote (Hutchinson & Co., 3s. 6d.) is a fat work, containing 
nearly 400 pages of close printing, the appearance of which is as unattractive as the 
contents. It is difficult to conceive a book with such a title being uninteresting, but 
Mr. Miles has succeeded in making it so by choosing passages from byegone works 
of — in many cases — long-forgotten authors. If we except the Rev. J. G. Wood and 
an occasional reference to Mr. Russell Wallace, we shall find Mr. Miles’s authori- 
ties date from the earlier of the century. We have Mrs. Bowdich, who died in 
1856; Captain Brown; James Hogg, “the Ettrick Shepherd;” some of Jesse’s 
“dog stories;” the Magazine of Natural History for 1831; Bishop Stanley, of 
Norwich; Sir William Jardine ; and numerous other contemporary authors: but 
our living naturalists might never have been born for all that Mr. Miles lets us 
know about their work. There are extraordinary omissions— the mongoose, for 
