ISLANDS AT WORLD’S END

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33965, 4 October 1975, Page 10

ISLANDS AT WORLD’S END

Galapagos: The Enchanted Islands. By Richard Hough. J. M. Dent and Sons. 48 pp. N.Z. price $5.90. The fascination of those strange equatorial islands where Darwin encountered the species and sub* species of animals and birds that helped crystallise his theories about the mutability of the species may attract many to this book. But adult readers will be disappointed. The book is slight; the text is written in a condescendingly simple way, the descriptions of the strange animals and birds found on the islands are altogether too cute, and the spidery sketches are a disappointment after the magnificent photograph on the dust-jacket. It is a pity that this book does not

proclaim itself openly as what it is ideally suited to be — a treasure for a youngster with an interest in natural history and sympathy for wild creatures. The dramatis personae of the book — the iguanas, giant tortoises, seals, lizards, frigate birds, boobies, and many others — should fascinate and delight a young mind. The book concludes with statements about the need to keep the Galapagos Islands in their relatively untouched state as a natural laboratory for natural historians. Passages deplore the damage that has already been done on the islands, and there is a plea that care be taken not to disturb the environment of the Galapagos further or to drive any of the species, some of them threatened, into extinction.