A Naturalist 
ANT HILL ODySSEy. By William M. 
Mann. 338 pp. Boston: Atlantic- 
kittle, Brown. $3.50. 
By BERNARD MISHKIN 
A S director of the National 
Zoo in Washington for the 
past twenty-three years, Dr. 
Mann has been weighed down by 
administrative cares, tied to the 
desk of a Government institution, 
immobilized by responsibilities to 
his animals—and the general 
public. Once, many years ago, it 
was all very different. And, as if 
to balance accounts and compen¬ 
sate for the years of heavy desk 
duty, he has set down these remi¬ 
niscences of the time when he 
was a promising young naturalist 
journeying to exotic places in 
search of exotic bugs. Certainly 
few entomologists have enjoyed 
wider and richer field experience. 
Few men have had a greater 
claim to the element of conti¬ 
nuity in their life work. 
He was 4 years old when, back 
in Montana, he started his first 
zoological collection. From then 
on he continued collecting unin¬ 
terruptedly, managing to sand¬ 
wich a formal education between 
collecting trips. In passing from 
boyhood to manhood, the author 
seems merely to have exchanged 
his amateur status as a collector 
for that of a professional. 
The professional collector be¬ 
gan his career shortly before 
World War I, as a member of the 
Stanford expedition to Brazil in 
charge of the ants, wasps and 
beetles department. His adven¬ 
tures on the Amazon are pleas- 
Remembers 
antly recorded with amusing 
comments on local customs and 
all too brief glimpses of the me¬ 
chanics of an expedition. 
After Brazil, and a short stu¬ 
dent interlude at Harvard, Dr. 
Mann went to Haiti for snakes 
and more ants, to Mexico for 
hummingbird moths, to the Ara¬ 
bian desert for spiny mice and at 
one period even spent a few 
months in his own back yard in 
Arizona collecting purple beetles. 
A more ambitious program of re¬ 
search was undertaken in a two- 
year zoological survey of Fiji and 
extended to include work in Aus¬ 
tralia and the Solomons. 
To this reviewer who has fol¬ 
lowed the author’s trail in Brazil 
and the South Pacific, the portion 
of. the book dealing with the 
South Seas is the most satisfying. 
Descriptions of animal life are 
joined to an interesting personal 
account of the human population. 
As the reader follows the story 
of each of these treks to find one 
or another bug he must become 
impressed with the striking testi¬ 
mony to William Mann’s success. 
The author is without question a 
born field worker—self-reliant 
and self-sufficient, adaptable and 
patient, and possessing a devel¬ 
oped sense of humor. To these 
qualities are added a passion for 
the out-of-the-way place and a 
longing to mix with men whose 
lives excite the imagination. Per¬ 
haps it is the pioneer air he 
breathed during his formative 
years in Montana that accounts 
for his devotion to the life of a 
\ 
William M. Mann. 
collector and explains why he has 
had the best time a man could 
ask for. 
One might have wished for the 
introduction of more first-hand 
material on the social behavior of 
insects and some comment on the 
eternally fascinating problem of 
instinct and intelligence. It is 
rather surprising that a student 
of Wheeler and a great admirer 
of Forel should show so little in¬ 
terest in these matters. And the 
book would have gained immeas¬ 
urably from the inclusion of 
more illustrative material. I have 
failed to find a picture of an ant 
anywhere in the book. 
Bernard Mishkin, an anthropolo¬ 
gist formerly on the faculty of 
Columbia University, was until re¬ 
cently a visiting professor at the 
University of San Marcos, Lima, 
Peru. 
