Books and Bookmen.

Timaru Herald, Volume XCVIII, Issue 17624, 8 October 1921, Page 5

Books and Bookmen.

friends of the wild

In a bright little book of 100 pages the Hon. G. Al. Thomson, ALGA/., F.L.S., etc, has just issued, primarily for budding naturalists, a first instalment ol : the story of New Zealand wild life. Believing that it is necessary, m a land which depends to a very large extent on agricultural and pastoral pursuits, that some “qnowledge of the animal and vegetable . hie should be taught in every school,” Mr Thomson has attempted to provide a book sufficiently scientific to be authoritative, and yet informal and simple enough to he interesting to the young a ud uneducated. In the present volume fio deals with mammalia, and, as lie is less concerned to be exhaustive than to develop the habit of observation, ho confines himself to those mammals about which the average person already knows something. It will, tor example, surprise, most people to know how many varieties, ot deer have been introduced into New Zealand, and how many have survived and increased. Mr Thomson has spent hours searching the records of the various acclimatisation societies, and both, in what, he lias discovered and has failed to discover has made every naturelover his debtor. In addition to tlio ‘•lost legions”—one even in such accessible country as the hinterland ot Palmerston South —our back country holds herds of which even sportsmen commonly know nothing; and how many of those who shoot deer know, sav, the natural history of the antlers?' Then, if we leave deer altogether, do we know, most of us, that the Domin.ion’s opossums are not opossums at all? Have we any real knowledge of the extent to which wild dogs once ravaged the sheep-thicks and even, occasionally, played the part of wolves towards men '■ And although we all know in a vague way that whales, seals and porpoises are not fish, do we realise that they have warm blood, suckle their young, and. are in other ways arresting) y land-1 übberish? And Air Thomson is no less interesting on the economic side. He has an unusually suggestive chapter on rabbits, tor example, in which ho admits quite frankly that in writing it he is hardly the, naturalist. The story of their introduction and subsequent devastations being too disturbing for science, lie drops lor ;t moment into the politician-economist, and makes a valiant attempt to unearth the discoverable facts about the first appearances of bunny in this formerly magnificentlygrassed "country. It seems that the early missionaries began the importations, but no one seems to have brought the responsibility home to one particular individual. In any case the missionary responsibility was small, since the rabbits they introduced were landed,, in, the far "north', and have not even yet* become a pest there. But the rabbitstory of the South is a different matter. Mr Thomson truly says that ‘‘the most ghastly exhibition' of the work ot rabbits is to be found in the grass-

denuded districts of Central Otago,’ and the full flavour of that is to be appreciated only after knowledge of the several ab.ortive attempts at acclimatisation which, preceded the final successful effort at Sandy Point in Southland. But we had better not pursue that story. What we have tried to indicate is t'iio variety and freshness of Air Thomson’s work, and especially nia repudiation of conniscience. There is not a chapter in which lie does not ■ ask for more information, and if this book frets the circulation 'it deserves. fie mil have a flood of correspondence from all over the Dominion. We hope, too, that when he gives us a second edition, he will renlace the somewhat disappointing fal low-stag in the frontispiece a rather unfortunately adapted drawinu from a well-known work of reference But some of the illustrations are admirable—the opossum, wallaby, redtjfaa;—and those that are not so good owe their inferiority to the necessity he has been under of using photographs of museum specimens. W© rtiaii iook forward eagerly to volume the second. (“Wild Life in New Zealand: Part p From- the New Zealand Board or Science and Art.) GLEANINGS. 1 Men went bald 1000 years ago as they did now. But apparently they did" not worry about it. Here is what Fo Ohu-i, a Chinese poet of 832 ■vt dawn I sighed to see my hairs Fall, At dusk I sighed to see my hairs fail. For I dreaded the time when the last

lock should go . . They are all gone and I do not mind at

all I I have done with that cumbrous wasluing and getting dry; . My tiresome com'o for ever is laid aside. , . , , Best of all. when the weather is hot

and wet, To have no top-not weighing down

on one’s head! I put aside my dirty conical cap; And loose my collar fringe. In a silver jar I have stored a cold

stream; On my bald pate I trickle a ladle-full. Like, one baptized with the Water of Buddha’s Law, I sit and receive this cool and cleans-

ing joy. Now I know why the priest who seeks

Repose Frees his heart by first shaving his head.

Let no man at all given to pessimism read Gustave Le Bon’s “The World in Rovolt” translated Ivy Bernard Miall, says the N.Y. “Evening Post.” It will overcome him. For the new era is pictured as the worst the world has known, and no one contends that the past has been altogether lovely. M. Le Bon finds everybody dissatisfied. The worker who obtained a fabulous increase in wages and a corresponding reduction in working hours would seize political power, but be cannot. The old middle classes feel themselves threatened ivithi utter extinction. The world, with particular reference to France' and India, is crowded with “educated unemployables” who are

convinced that, being in possession of degrees and diplomas, they to the foremost positions and are gamg to cause trouble if their miagmed merits are not recognized. Men went to va^ with the understanding that wars to be no more, yet militarism is as nfe as ever

Edward Elgar the composer ol Wied “Edward Elgar.” ‘‘Add the word “Sir! 3 ” snapped the schoolmaster. The second reply came meekly, * u „ prophetically, “Sir Edward Elgar. Though the well meaning Pedagogue failed to appreciate the prophecy, n lived to I>© of benefit to his youthfuJ charge in ways ot which he was quite unconscious at the tame. He be that young men should bo thoroughly instructed in the Bible, and derated, consequently, a great deal of time telling them sacred stones. It was Jus eloquent and repeated history of the Apostles that was directly responsible for the germ of Sir Edward Elgar s groat oratorio of like title. It was in tile same school, too, that h© learned the value of small things and the necessity of leaving nothing undone it perfection were to be attained. His orchestra complained once about tne lack of instruments. ‘Very well, said Sir Edward, “if the piece demands forty harps get forty harps even it they play only three notes. And has advice for remedying the defects of a choir he was conducting was merely this: “Get a new choir!’ I Now when the veil is quite widely ' regarded as the symbol of modesty, why, in the name of homiletics,. asks Mr Chesterton, should people think it i, sign of that quality’s opposite when a damsel -paints her face? Does not one covering as well 1 as the otne conceal the ineptitudes of nature-just what reformers are always urging. Ur, quite as likely, the lady pamts in order to be less conspicuous, hoping merely to melt into the landscape by the use ot camouflage and thus move about, quietly obscure. Or, no doubt, tne ! cosmetic addict rouges and blues herI self because of a profound Puritan ! asceticism, striving to mortify the flesh bv covering up an attractive, healthy , complexion/ Indeed, writes Mr Chesterton in the Illustrated London News, I “my first impression of the modern make-up is that it is not so much Pagan as Puritan, in the sense of being needlessly and unnaturally ascetic. I can . only suppose that these young ladles i have some strange, exalted, and austere I motive for making themselves ugly. 1 * * * *

In his “Lords of the Housetops” a collection of thirteen cat tales, an American author makes it perfectly plain that though the cat does not rescue babies from drowning or count up to five in chips of firewood and to seven in mutton hones, he* nevertheless possesses virtues of his own which are quite superior to those of any other animal. Ho feels that the cat has been wofully neglected by poets, hut derives a measure of consolation from the belief that there must have been a tremendous cat literature in the days of the ancient Egyptians, and that even if it was all burned in the celebrated holocaust of Alexandria, its very existence shows that there was once a people which had the right spirit. His attitude is to be commended; for the great things of life have all been done as the result of enthusiasm. Of the unlucky number of feline stories he has ’brought out in this volume it Is probable that his American clientele will enjoy Charles Dudley Warner’s “Calvin” most.