A Good Naturalist

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30058, 16 February 1963, Page 3

A Good Naturalist

Quest Of The Curly-tailed Horses. An Autobiography. By Noel Monkman. Angus and Roberson. 212 pp. Index.

A New Zealander by birth, Noel Monkman has become well-known as a naturalist and producer of films dealing with microscopic marine life of the Great Barrier Reef. He was. in fact, the first to enter the field of undersea photography in Australia, and the first in that country to combine the

microscope and the motionpicture camera in the making of educational films. Since 1931 he has made many films, both under water and on hand, and his subjects have included crustaceans, coral fish, sea-birds and crocodiles. It is only towards the end of the book, however, that the author describes in detail the unique delights and hazards of this fascinating work. A large part of the autobiography is concerned with the author’s childhood struggles to assert his individuality, and the search for a career. Much is made of childhood adversities, some of which readjike the pages of a sensational romance. At an early age (we are not told when), his puritanical

grandmother determines to hide him aiway from his mother, who has just separated from her husband, by sending him to a back-blocks farm. Here he is bullied by a stem governess and victimised by small girls; he is frequently beaten; with a friend he escapes into the bush, existing for over a week on rabbits; his mother, who has become a professional singer, finds out where he is staying and meets him secretly at weekends; the visits are discovered, and Noel is shut up in his room for several days on a diet of bread and water, an ordeal which temporarily deprives him of his power of speech; he is bundled away to a house in Dunedin, and is nearly strangled one night when his landlady’s daughter has a epileptic fit. Unfortunately, these potentially rich experiences are not satisfactorily transmuted into art. The menacing personalities surrounding the young boy (reminiscent of the Gorky household). remain shadowy and unconvincing outlines, which do not involve the reader; their emotional storms and tensions sometimes come close to melodrama.

The author is more at home with plants and fish than with people, and writes best when he has his eye firmly on the object. He describes the minutest forms of plant life with the simple directness and lucidity of a good naturalist. By comparison, the larger part of his book makes flat reading Indeed, the qualities which redeem this uneven book from mediocrity are an infectious delight and curiosity in the myriad intricate forms of nature, including the most minute living organisms known to the microscope. It is a ptiy that his crTflht mt miii embedded in so much indifferent writing.

The book is wril-iUustroted with * number at pistes both in colour and Hack and atik