EXPLORING WITH BEEBE

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 94, 22 April 1933, Page 17

EXPLORING WITH BEEBE

As an author of fifteen works dealing with zoological and ornithological subjects, Mr. William Beebo is well known to lovers of animals in two hemispheres. And although the present book —the sixteenth—is .sub-entitled "Selections for Younger 'Readers," it bears within its pages a vivid appeal to children of a larger growth. The author writes of the denizens of the wilds —and waters— with rare sympathy and delicate perception. Excursions into the lands of whooping frogs, "yapocks"—which are aquatic, web-footed opossums—tho dwellers in the swamps of Panama, ,:ind the sloths and Argus pheasants of Borneo will hold the interest of everyone. For here is adventure.. and knowledge of queer fauna 1 hitherto denied to most of us. To the uninitiated, the description of submarine life off the Cocos and Galapagos Island will come as a revelation of beauty undreamt of on land or sea. The snows of the Himalayas at dawn, the emerald and roso sunsets of tho Persian Gulf, must be poor things compared with the rainbow- effects of massed, slow-moving angel, parrot, wresse, coral, and pig fish seen through the window of a diving-helmet in a medium clearer than crystal. And down among the palaces of coral over which the dolphins—those "souls of drowned sailors" —riot in sport, the observer walks cheek by jowl with grim, grey sharks that float ghost-like, within his touch.