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REVIEWS AND EXCHANGES. 
Riviera. Nature Notes: a Popular Account of the more striking Plants and 
Animals of the Riviera and the Maritime Alps. Manchester : The Labour 
Press, Limited, 8vo, pp. xx. and 373. Illustrated. Price 6s. 6d. 
We have not been localised like the Parish Magazine ; but we were naturally 
interested beforehand in a work which has paid us the compliment of adapting 
our title. On reading “ Riviera Nature Notes,” however, we soon found 
ourselves deeply interested in the book for its own sake. The author is evidently 
a man of education and of wide sympathies, who knows his ground and its plants 
well, and has plenty to tell about them and about many of the animal inhabitants 
of the district also, both large and small. Many of the chapters are devoted to 
individual plants or groups of animals, such as the Great Reed (Arundo Donax), 
the carob, the olive, green frogs, mosquitos, the date palm, the tarantula, armed 
plants, climbing plants, &c., and though such topics irresistibly tempt a well- 
grounded botanist like the author to indulge in occasional “ Kernerisms,” these 
are by no means exceptionally wild. We think that the writer would have done 
well to resist the etymological temptation to connect Semitic and Aryan roots. 
We all know the word can in connection with water, and no doubt it is tempting 
to connect Cana of Galilee with Cannte and Cannes, as reedy places, with canna, 
a reed, and a hypothetical primitive root can, meaning water ; but it is a 
temptation. The following is perhaps safer : — “ ‘ Broom ’ in English means both 
the Genista and the bunch of its twigs which we use for sweeping. The Kymric 
‘bala’ has the same double meaning, and I believe that Lake Bala, in North 
Wales, is so called from the Genista growing round its shores. From ‘bala’ 
is derived the French word ‘balai.’” There are numerous side-lights or. the 
plants of the Bible, so many of which occur also on the Riviera, and we had 
marked many passages for quotation, such as the humorous description of the 
mosquito as a test of character ; but even if our space — or rather, want of it — 
did not prevent our transcribing them, where all is so good selection would be 
difficult. Dr. W. Allen Sturge adds an interesting chapter on “Prehistoric Man 
on the Riviera,” and there is a list of the butterflies and hawk- and burnet-moths. 
Commendatore Ilanbury, to whom the work is dedicated, adds a few notes, and 
there is a fairly complete index. Printing and binding are alike excellent, though 
diacious and moniccious occur several times ; but we think the illustrations hardly 
worthy of so excellent a work. Those who have visited, or are about to visit, 
this sunny south, whether scientific or not, will do well to add this work to their 
libraries. 
Four-footed Americans and their Kin. By Mabel Osgood Wright, edited by 
Frank M. Chapman. Illustrated by Ernest Seton Thompson. New York : The 
Macmillan Company, 8vo, pp. 432. Price 7s. 6d. 
This is a popular guide to a knowledge of North American quadrupeds 
intended mainly for children and thrown into the form of a story ; but the 
execution of the work is none the less thoroughly scientific. “The Animal 
Tree ” is carefully explained, and a picture is given of its “ Vertebrate Branches” 
and of the “North American Mammal Tree,” whilst, in addition to an index of 
English names, a “ ladder” is also provided for climbing the latter tree, in which 
all the scientific names of families and species, and the sizes of the various 
animals, are given. There are about fifty excellent whole-page illustrations, so 
that we consider the book a decidedly cheap one. Many on this side of the 
Atlantic will be glad of the opportunity Mr. Thompson gives them of becoming 
better acquainted with the appearance of the woodchuck, the jack rabbit, the 
prairie dog, and the gopher, for instance, with the names of which they may long 
have been familiar in the pages of American authors. 
The Structure and Classification of Birds. By Frank E. Beddard, M.A., 
F.R.S., Prosector and Vice-Secretary of the Zoological Society. Longmans, 
8vo, pp. xx. and 548. With 252 illustrations. Price 21s. net. 
This is undoubtedly the most important work that the author, one of our 
chief living zoologists, has yet given us. lie has from his position exceptional 
