February i, 19 17 
LAND & WATER 
Books to Read 
By Lucian Oldersha.w 
17 
BORNEO, with its English Rajah and its gruesome. 
Head-hunters, has long had a romantic attraction 
for Englishmen. Its romantic interest is ex- 
tended from the human to the animal kingdom 
in the late Robert W. C. Shelford's fascinating \olume, 
A Natumlist in Borneo (T. Fisher Umvin, 15s. net). This 
volume, carefully edited by his sometime chief. Professor 
E. B. Poulton, who has had the assistance of a number 
of friends and fellow- workers in the same field, may be 
regarded in one aspect as a nronument to the pious 
memory of the distinguished young scientist who wrote 
it during his last illness and had not completed it at the 
time of his death in January, 1912. Mr. Shelford's 
career as a naturalist began in the East, hke the late 
Professor Minchin's, and in a somewhat similar manner, 
both having turned their attention to " bug-hunting," 
owing to an inabihty, through illness, to join in the 
ordinary outdoor pursuits of boj-hood. After graduating 
at Cambridge, Shelford went to the East again in iSq; 
to become Curator of Rajah Brooke's museum at Sarawak. 
There lie remained se\en years, the last seven years 
of his life being for the most part spent as Assistant- 
Curator of the Hope Department at Oxford, with fruitful 
results in an exhaustive studv of the cockroach. 
What wide knowledge atid what powers of observation 
Shelford brought to his study of the O.xford collection of 
cockroaches are revealed in A Naturalist in Borneo. 
He does not here conhne himself to the insect life of the 
island, there are chapters on mammals, birds and reptiles, 
and more than that, there are interesting descriptions of 
the country and its inhabitants. He is the complete 
naturalist who, is explorer as well as collector and 
classifier. " If now," . he says, after describing an 
expedition to Penrisen, " settled quietly at home, I 
ever hear the ' East a-calling,' it is not the life in the 
towns that calls mc, not the freedom of social inter- 
course, not the boundless hospitality of friends and neigh- 
bours, nor the luxuries of a tropical home, but the dark, 
mysterious forest with its teeming life, the nights dn the 
river-bank, with the rushing stream beside me, the 
starry sky above, the camp-fue with the nati\es huddled 
round telling tales in murmuring tones, the shrill clamour 
of the insects filling the whole air — these are the things 
that call. . . . One was in closest contact with 
Nature then — Nature almost savagely triumphant, 
riotously luxuriant, and whosoe\er has learnt to know 
her in this mood can never altogether forget his lesson." 
We are given an account of a successful head-hunting 
expedition, happily quickly punished, as late as the year 
1904. The strict and beneficent government of Rajah 
Brooke has, however, rendered the European traveller 
in his State immune from all human danger. 
* * * s;: * 
On the side of Natural History, Shelford's book is so 
rich in good things that H is difficult to select. I recom- 
mend his chapter on "'"^Jlimicry"' alike to the general 
reader apt to be confused on this subject and to tha 
scientist apt to be confusing.' For the rest let me open 
the book at random. I am sure to be able to call atten- 
tion to something interesting. Here is a li\ely description 
of a ghoulish little creature, the.Borncan lemur, which 
has never been seen in a European menagerie. Here 
is material for an article in a popular science journal on 
'' Do Snakes Fly ? " Here is an account of a familv of 
insects that not only look like flowers themselves, "but 
whose eggs ha\e the appearance of seeds.' It is from 
a branch of this same family, the Phasraids^; that the 
author gives a remarkable example of parthenogenesis 
in animal life. He reared some successfully for eight 
generations \v-ithout a male ever putting in an appear- 
ance. Here is an intcreiting disquisition on the arrow- 
shaped tongue of the bird of prey. Here —but . I must 
check my indination to re-read in detail a book which 
has already gi\en me so much pleasure. It only reirrains 
to be said that its value is increased bv illustrations. 
What first strikes me in reading Mr. Warwick Deeping's 
new novel, Martin Valliant (Cassell and Co., 6s.), is the 
progress he has made in the craft of story-telling since 
those rather laborious early no\-els of his some dozen or 
so \-oars ago. E\en then the roots of this matter of 
romance were in him and produced sonie sti-ange and 
beautiful flowers, but too often hidden in the mass of 
foliage in \\hich the reader was apt to lose his way — 
and his interest. In the numerous novels he has written 
since he has learnt to lop and prune, to get rid of 
redundancies of style and matter that impedes action, 
and, here, in Martin Valliant is a story of which it can 
truthfully be said that it goes with a swing from start 
to finish." Perhaps by the strict canons of the historical 
novel it goes too fast, for Jlr. Deeping has gone to the 
other extreme of literary gardening, and displays a 
landscape that is all flowers with no foliage by way of 
relief. However, I fancy the average reader will regard 
this as a venial fault, and will soon be engrossed in the 
adventures of the monk who was too proud and too 
spiritual for his grosser brother of the Abbey of Paradise, 
but who became a man-at-arms and a most redoubtable 
one at the urgent call of that most fascinating of heroines. 
Mellis Dale. There is in this book the spirit of the 
forest in which its scenes are laid. There are dasliing 
feats of arms. There is the Spring in it, and that perennial 
spring offensive. Love. 
;|: -i. if if it 
So much for sedati\-es. The war is with us again in 
Mr. Harry E. Brittain's To Verdun from the Somine 
(John Lane, 2s. 6d. net), a little collection of travel 
sketches in the midst of warlike operations. The 
travelling was apparently' undertaken to enable Mr. 
James M. Beck, the eminent New York citizen, to visit 
the chief places on the \\'estern Front, and Mr. Beck 
^^Titesa "Foreword," in which with an e\ident sincerity 
that moves one, he pays a tribute to the two Western 
AUies, and especially to the disinterestedness c)!^ Britain's 
effort. Mr. Harry Brittain's travel pictures well catch 
the movement and the mood of last summer on the 
Western Front. He is an astute observer and describes 
what he has seen with the discretion demanded 
by the subject and the Censor, but without the 
dullness that often accompanies such discretion. His 
book is eminently worth reading, especially by those who 
can- cross the " i " and dot the " fs." to say nothing of 
interpreting the asterisks. 
* * * * f 
In the Battle Silenees (Constable and Co., is.), is a 
little volume of poems written at the front by a Canadian 
soldier, Frederick George Scott. They show, if not any 
marked originality, at any rate the high courage and 
undaunted resolve that distinguish the work of all the 
soldier-poets. Its spirit may be gathered from one 
verse of A Grave in Flanders : — 
•• 'J1iis boy had visions while in life 
Of stars on distant skies ; 
So death came in the midst of strife, 
A sudden, glad surprise." 
* * * * * 
( iossip about the-grcat Napoleon always has fascination, 
and many English readers will therefore have a ready 
welcome for Constance Lady De La Warr's translation 
of Emile St."" Hilaire's reminiscences of his friend, now 
j)ublished under the title of Personal Recollcetions of tho 
Empire (Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent and Co., Os.). 
The book is full of interest, chiefly of a sentimental 
nature and concerns itself very largely with Napoleon's 
women-folk. In it may be learnt the simple story of 
his first love and the more complex tale of his affair in 
Egypt with the wife of one of his ofticers. The most 
attractive section of the book perhaps is that which deals 
with the Emperor's faithful barber, Hebert, and there 
are some good tales, of a familiar kuid, of incognito 
wanderings. A fitting epilogue is an interview with 
Napoleon's old mother in Rome, when ..she speaks, of 
her great son simply as he was to her wlicn a boy. 
