34 THE ASUsDU;B ON eB GD EN 
In the book, Sparks and Soper have included a magnificent picture 
of an Eagle Owl. Who could not admire this great and magnificent bird! 
There he stands, with his powerful claws, tufts like the Devil, eyes alert 
and feathers down to the limb of the pine tree. 
Many drawings indicate much about the hunting and nesting habits 
of the owl. An appendix is devoted to owl eyesight and hearing—two 
fascinating features of this “watchman of the night.” It is a myth that 
Owls are blind in the daytime, since some species hunt by day. 
Though the plight of our hawks is well known, Audubon members 
would do well to stir themselves to the protection of owls and their very 
survival. In view of the catastrophic decline of our birds of prey, and if 
we do not give a greater hoot, there will soon be no owls to hoot, either. 
Sparks and Soper have helped spotlight the tragedy of DDT, mercury 
poisoning, nest robbers and decoys. 
—Raymond Mostek 
THE ALIEN ANIMALS. By George Laycock. 
Natural History Press, Garden City, N. Y., 1966, $4.95. 
Audubon/Ballentine, 1970, 95c (paperback) 
This is a book that had to be written. Against claims and boasts, the 
popular glamor and romanticism of feature stories, and the pure propaganda 
of the transplanters—importers of so-called “exotic” animals—some strong 
voice of judgment and common sense had to be raised. This has now 
been done. 
The voice is that of George Laycock, known to readers of the National 
Audubon Magazine and to other natural history literature buffs as one of 
our most brilliant conservation writers. For this writing he has one quali- 
fication not possessed by many of his colleagues: a degree in wildlife 
management. The tone of his book is set in early paragraphs of pr SESE 
first chapter: 
“Man has long considered himself capable of improving upon nature. 
He often regards nature’s distribution of its creatures as haphazard or at 
best unfortunate... He has moved birds halfway around the earth to eat 
some insect they do not like, introduced rabbits to foreign countries where 
they created barren lands... It may have begun with Noah, but. wherever 
it started, the whole idea of rearranging the earth’s wild creatures still 
seems irresistible. Man, the supreme meddler, has never been quite satisfied 
with the world as he found it, and, as he has dabbled in rearranging it to 
his own design, he has frequently created surprising and frightening 
situations for himself.” 
Laycock gives scant space to accidental imports that have been hazard- 
ous: from times of the Pilgrims when clothes moths arrived on the May- 
flower, and of the American Revolution when wheat flies infested the 
straw mattresses Hessian mercenaries brought from Europe, to varied 
rodents including the destructive Norway rat that stowed away on count- 
less ships bound for our shores. 
The author’s emphasis is on numerous man-made disasters. Best known 
to most of us in America are two ubiquitous birds, English sparrows, 
brought here in the 1870s and starlings introduced in the 1890s. Contrary 
to the widely held notion that these aliens were invited by a few eccentric 
citizens of New York City, it is revealed that both came in planned cam- 
