NEW BOOKS AND PUBLICATIONS.

Press, Volume LX, Issue 18195, 4 October 1924, Page 11

NEW BOOKS AND PUBLICATIONS.

ANIMALS OF NEW ZEALAND. It is twenty years since ''The Animals of New Zealand." by the late Captain Hutton and Mr James Drummoci. made its first welcome appeal - anee. It was explained by the authors or this admirable book that their object war, to combine popular information v ith the purely scientific to pu!>IMi a volume, that is to say. which would be useful to naturalists and ;U the same time inwrcsviug to tho general public. The book was very suecessful. and two fresh editions were called for. It thoroughly deserved the praise given to it by British newspapers of the standing of "Nature a"d tho ' 'Spectator'' and tho success which it has had far beyond the shores of New Zealand. A fourth edition has now been published and tho oppoitui.ity lias been taken to make man> terations and additions. Of these the most- important are a descriptioni of a new frog; and an account of the Maori deg and the .Maori rat, with some notes on birds introduced from otlie countries. In iiis preface to the sent edition. Mr Drummond 1 interesting and encouraging ie ; ■ , to the stability of the birdlife of thi, country. He says: "For manv years ornithologists under tho impression that >.e* Zea.an _ birds wore rushing headlong to - tion, and th.it they would soon pass completely away. The utter extormmation, in a flash of "time, ea I may say, ° . God's brightest and most harmless bem s which lias been represented in tins 1 for ages, is a regrettable incident in i world's history, and it is not surprising that naturalists and scientists should commiserate with New Zealand in the loss that seemed to be impending. lam g-a to be able to sound a brighter note. Some time ago, by the courtesy of tlie Agricultural Department, I had thousands of circulars sent to all parts of the Dominion. These circulars contained inestions in regard to our birds' present position. When they were returned to me, I found that almost all the birds had been accounted for exicept one. The missing bird is the native quail (coturnix novaczealandiae), which fell in thousands before the grreat grass fires that swept through the land as settlement advanced. There is no convincing evidence that any New Zealand bird, except the Stsphen'o Island wren and the native quail, has been exterminated by the European inhabitants of this country."

While we are referring to the preface we may note that Mr Drummond is obliged to record the disappearance of Pelorus Jack. This famous dolphin was last seen in 1916, and he has been missing since that date. The authors deal with each member of mammalia, birds, reptiles and amphibians. For each individual there is a careful description followed by full notes upon hr.bits and locality. . The mammalia, are so feiv, consisting as they do of bats ,and Sea-beasts, that 'they 'occupy no more than thirty pages. But New Zealand is a good land for birds, and nearly three hundred pages are given to these. It is not easy to write a book on the animal life of a country which shall he useful to scientists and naturalists, and which shall yet avoid being dull. The authors of the "Animals cf New Zealand," however, have been very happy in combining a scientific treatment of the subject with a popular treatment, so that they have fully achieved the aim they set themselves, to provide a work which would be interesting to all who love the wild life of Nature. The section on introduced birds covers a field with which the average New Zealander is pretty familiar. It is very good so far as it goes, but it could be greatly improved if Mr Drummond could find it possible to obtain and include particulars of the circumstances in which the foreigners were introduced. , This book was the first of a series pf which the publishers have every reason to be proud, as the forerunner of "The Plants of New Zealand," "Australian Plants," "The Animals of Australia" and ''The Birds of Australia." It is equipped with indexes of Maori names and common names, and an appendix showing the division into classes, orders, families, genera and species. There is also a tab]-© of New Zealand air breathing vertebrates. The nomenclature of Nev/ Zealand birds is still confused and unsettled, but a comoreheneive name-list brought no to iS24 has been prepared by Mr Oliver, of the Dominion Museum, for inclusion in the book. It is not usual in noticing new publications to make any reference to the typography, but the minting of the "Animals ol New Zealand" is so good and the type so well chosen that it cannot be passed over. The excellent illustrations m half tone are a pleasant adornment of as agreeable a volume as the New Zealander is likely to meet with however far iiis reading may take him. (Cliristchurch : Whitcombe and Tombs.) Another book of interest to lovers of outdoor-life comes from the same publisher. This is "Angling in New Zealand," by Mr F. Carr Rollett. In this little book Mr Rollett aims at providing for oversea anglers an account of the range and variety or our rivers and lakes. Angling m New Zealand has now a widespread fame, and Mr Rollett's book fills a real need. It is short but it tells the oversea angler and the home angler, too, tor that matter, most of what be needs to know, and where to go for the kind of fishiner that he wants. F ? r , lllust *£~ tions there are enticing photographs of various well-known fishing centres. AUSTRALIA. Jose's ''History of Australia" has now reached its tenth edition and 60-thousandth issue, and with each new appearance has become more accurate and useful. The work appeared first m 1899, in a modest issue of 1000; two years later it was revised and re-issued in 10,000; and every two or three vears since a further edition has been called for of anything from two to six thousand. It is proof of Mr ose , dustry and thoroughness that no edi i has ever passed through his hands without complete or partial revision, and the result of this conscientiousness is that the volume which we now " av ® is easily the most accurate record o Australia available to the genera reader. The author has not found i easy to keep his narrative down to rfou pages, but since it is the secret o a popular success that there must be no tediousness or diffuseness, he ia done wisely to make the attempt. New Zealand section, though it contains only 50 pages, is * ema ' ka ?£ satisfactory as an account of Dominion's earliest days, though i anomalous, and to overseas rea ers perilously like false pretences, a New Zealand should be included at an. It is an advantage that the type of t i edition has been slightly entarge > while the very full index of -9 P a S is itself worth the price of ® whole volume. (Sydney: Angus a Robertson.) .. . . Another volume which throws nga on Australia —-J; ho ugh a wholly roman ic light—is '' The Spell of the Island, by John Armour. The author is stranger to us, and we should ' £ authorship, but anyone who ___ the trouble to follow him all the whether he is preaching the Gospe Prohibition or the evil of large o ings or the manliness of ' Aussies" —will know a great deal m ° about Central Australia than he e knew before. It is the only Do }' e Y" have yet read, and may easily be t onlj novel in existence, which mov_ __

all the m tlKit part of Australia wnieh Stefansson discovered the other day anu railed very good. If we add that "llalph Connor" seems to he the author's "oulie begetter'' in a literary sense, the reader will know what to expect. (.Sydney; The Cornstalk Publishing Company Ansrus and Robertson.) Then to balance the Inland we have the Northland, described for us in "'The Land of the Sun," by E. J. Brady. The laud of the sun is North Queensland. and if there is anything there that is not paradisaical Mr Brady has not seen it. He tells us that ho writes '•enthusiastically of that sunlit country 7 •' because enthusiasm is "no more than the tribute he owes for the sparkling draughts of Health and Hope with which the North refreshed him body and soul." He declares further that just as people in Northern Australia dispense with such articles of clothing as they consider unnecessary, so he will write of '' these glorious Australian tropics and their generous people just as impression and impulse incline his pen." To him it is a land of dreams, and the book he writes about it is a book of dreams. The people are all, in some way, beautiful, the soil is rich, the vegetation was never equalled; the Government is good and wise; the possibilities of development are unlimited. Down in Brisbane even, and it is far worse if you descend to Sydney or Melbourne, the soul is sickened by meanness and pretence, but turn North and "depression falls from run like tho sloughed bark of a tree." Unless you are prepared to be sympathetic Brady will be an annoying guide to you; but if you can respond, and keep .on responding, go North with Brady and "hear the silken rustle of the palm-trees!" Go North and "hear the wild geese honking under velvet night skies powdered with the stars!'' (London: Edward Arnold. Melbourne: Robertson and Mullens.) THE GARDEN OF FOLLY. Once or twice during his 'career —'when lie wrote ''Frenzied Fiction," and again when lie wrote ' 'Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy"—Stephen Leaeock aroused in his admirers a little fear that his inspiration was failing. But. later books swept away that foai', and this same and frivolous philosopher causes no more anxiety. His new book, "The Garden of Folly," is as good as anything he has ever done. But look at his subject—this silly earth; In his preface he says : "This poor old world works hard and gets no richer; thinks liard and gets no wiser; worries much find gets no happier. It casts off old errors to take on new ones: laughs at ancient superstitions and shivers over modern ones. It is at best but a Garden of Folly whose chattering gardeners move a moment among tho flowers, waiting for the sunset." The follies of the world are just now more numerous and more ridiculous than ever before, and many wise men grieve over them and write tliem down. Leaeock does not grieve over them; he laughs at them. And has laughter is far more deadly than a million volumes of solemn reproof. It is impossible to imagine a sensible man rending I lie Garden of Folly" and failing thereafter to smile at the solemn absurdities which L encode, satirising them, lias exposed for what they are. Bosh in American advertising methods, bosh about nuncl, bosh about food—all the earnest bosn with which tlio world seems to busy itself—these are the subjects ot nis droll and alert wisdom. It is impossible to read this.new book without laughing from beginning to end, arid then on© finds oneself thinking: seriously about it, and returns to a. re-readmg with a heightened appreciation of its gaiety and sanity. (London ; John Lane. Sydney: Dymock's.) novels. With Corrad gone, novelists of tho sea have lost their master, and the only worthy standard by which to measure their progress. But they have of course', gained something. While Conrad lived and wrote it was impossible for tho best of his contemporaries to persuade anyone that they also counted; and now they have their chance. William McFee, for example, the American, is bound to attract more* notice in future, and we should not be surprised to see a, boom in Altred tanford McFee's countryman, whose A .City' of the Sea" has just reached New Zealand. Stanford certainly writes English, and has what may be called relatively an active sense of style. It might even be said of him that ho has both originality and power, if the phrase is understood to mean no more than that he lias a way of producing his effects which is a better _ way than that of nine out of ten of liis contemporaries. He knows tlie sea, and he seems to know the men and women who live on it or near it, and knowledge is the beginning of power. But we should like him better if ho were not so anxious to prove that every sailor is a man of mystery, or of violence, or of both, and that the life of the ooean makes ordinariness in character impossible. (Appleton and Co., London and New York.) - Mr John Buchan has taken Dick Hannay and Sandy Arbuthnot- out of the box again, and set them in "The Three Hostages," a story almost as thrilling as "Greenmantle." A super-Nihilist at the head of some rather vatguely conceived international plot has kidnapped three young people —children of three important public men and holds them, as hostages pending tho consummation of his scheme to ruin society. Dic-k Hanna.y and Arbuthnot engage themselves to rescue_ tlie hostages and blow up the conspiracy. There is plenty of excellent melodrama, but the machinery of the story creaks in places and the Nihilist Medina is a. poor piece of drawing. A very re markable duel in the Highlands supplies a graphic and <well-done ending to what may with advantage be tho last appearance of Mr Bucbs.n's favourite marionettes. (London and Sydney: Hcdder and Stoughton). James Oliver Curwood' writes of Canada—the Canada that no man will or can know who does not read his books. Nominally his territory is the country that drains into Hudson Bay*, but actually it is a romantic land which lie alone has ever seen. And just as his "wild spaces" are frontierised, so the men, and even the beasts, that roam over them are not like any men or beasts to be found away from his pages or films. We may take thein or leave thom, but Mr Curwood will not change them —and should not while his market lasts. He has told us somewhere that his ancestry is part Indian, and now that liis publishers have added the further confidence that it reaches also to Captain Marrvat, there is nothing to do but aocept their suggestion that when Curwood quarrels with reality it is reality tliat is wrong. His new volume is called "A Gentleman of Courage," but as all liis backwoodsmen are gentlemen, and are born brave, he should have called it a "Variation on a Well-Wom Theme." (London: Hodder and Stoughton. Christchureh: Whitoombe axid Tombs.) "The Three of Clubs," by Mr Valentine Williams, is a spy story full oi' action, and the thrilling situations which he is so skilful in contriving. A first-rate "shocker." (London and Sydney: Hodder and Stoughton.) BOOKS RECEIVED. A City Out of the Sea. Bv Alfred Stan-ford-—Many Waters. By Elinor Chipp: D. Appleton and Co., New York. The Squatter's Dream. By Roli Boldre(Contiaued at foot of next colnna^

wood.—Old Bosh Songs. Edited by "Banjo'' P^teifcm. —The True Story of SQtfgaret Catcfcpoiev By -G. B. Baxtan.—Judith's Garden. By Mary E. Stone Bcs&ett: . The Constable Pnb'iahlng Company (Angus and Bobertaon), Sydney. Till the Clock Stops. By J. J. BelL — Urider the White Cockade. By Halliwell Sutciifie.—Sa'd for a Sons. By Nat Gould. —Lord of Himself. By Chsr'eß Garvice: John Long. iLttL* London*