CURRENT BOOKS

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25300, 27 September 1947, Page 7

CURRENT BOOKS

SPONGE TO BAT Native Animals of New Zealand. By A. W. B. Pavell. Auckland Museum Handbook of Zoology: Unity Press Ltd. 96 pp. [Reviewed by R. A. FALLA.] One can predict a steady demand for this book. It is an Auckland Museum handbook of Zoology; but, as the author’s preface states, it is not a catalogue of exhibits but a popuiai treatise on the native fauna. This comprehensive way of treating New '2’.ealand animal life has not been attempted before except in a book by W. Martin, long out of print. The great merit of the present publication is in its attractive presentation and its concise descriptions, related to numbered illustrations. Of these there are 411, beginning jyith sponges and ending with bats. Some groups such as the shellfish are more fully treated than others; but on the whole there is a very good balance, and no amateur naturalist is likely to pick up a specimen ashore or afloat that will not be identifiable from the book.

New Zealand has a long way to go in the matter of good popular books on natural history. Our tradition has been altogether too academic; and the interested learner has been discouraged by the severe form of standard handbooks, the lack of illustration, high prices, and the suddenness with which they go out of print. In this venture the Auckland Museum has indeed provided something to “fill a long-felt want.” The book may be relied upon as accurate and the illustrations will make their own appeal; but it is only in actual use that its real value will be aporeciated, and the amount of work that has gone into its compilation fairly measured Mr Powell is not only an artist and a competent ’ zoologist; his knowledge of printing and reproduction have enabled him to collaborate with the printers in producing a really attractive and useful handbook.

MARITAL Of Wives and Wiving. By John Buncle, Jnr. Caxton Press. 83 pp. This “manual of instruction, exhortation, and admonition gathered from older authors for the guidance, delight, and moral fortification of contemporary readers” is a very agreeable little anthology—agreeable on all accounts. The junior John Buncle has read widely and wisely and chosen well but not too copiously; so that his readers have the three complementary pleasures, of finding many passages they eagerly look for, of welcoming many unknown.or forgotten, and of being able to exclaim against what they feel to be lamentable omissions. Most of John Buncle’s authors are English: the only exceptions are Epicurus, Madame D’Arblay, and Montaigne. Johnson (by way of Boswell and in his owiFletters), Burton (three fine pieces), Cobbett (as sound on love and marriage as on turnips), and poor resolving, falling Dick Steele figure oftenest. The palm must go to Izaak Walton’s account of the saintly Richard Hooker’s choice and endurance of his wife. The special award for the funniest extract goes, of course, to the scandalous John Aubrey. But praising unstintedly, the reviewer may be allowed to reduce all complaints to one: he will never forgive John Buncle for leaving out Sam Weller’s account of the elder Sam’s theory and practice as a philosophical husband.