(1) Great and Small Things (2) The Badger: Afield and Underground (3) A Perthshire Naturalist: Charles Macintosh of Inver (4) The Highlands with Rope and Rucksack

Abstract

(1) THE volume before us is the fifth, if we are not X mistaken, in a series of volumes whereby Sir Ray Lankester has rendered notable service to those persons who, though debarred by circumstance from undertaking sustained research, deeply sympathise with advance in natural science, are eager for sound informa-tion, and grateful to a competent showman, so to speak. In the present volume the author ranges wide-from the gorilla which, having spent its childhood in devoted attachment to a lady in Sloane Street, sickened and died when she was obliged to part with him, to the parasites of a pond snail and Metchnikoff's investigation of the means of making old age still older. The title of the book is well chosen, for it contains the conclusions of a trained intellect upon such great problems as the suffering inseparable from the existence of all animals, and upon such small ones as the relative advantage (or otherwise) of the different ways of using tobacco. Even those smokers who display little interest in chemical science, though rightly regarding nicotine as the chief toxic agent in tobacco, may feel relieved in learning that “it is a colourless volatile liquid, which is vaporised and carried along with the smoke,” and not the malodorous oily juice that collects in the stem of a foul pipe or the stump of a cigar. (1) Great and Small Things. By Sir Ray Lankester. Pp. xi + 246. (London: Methuen and Co., Ltd., 1923.) 7s. 6d. net. (2) The Badger: Afield and Underground. By H. Mortimer Batten. Pp. 159 + 12 plates. (London: H. F. and G. Witherby, 1923.) 8s. 6d. net. (3) A Perthshire Naturalist: Charles Macintosh of Inver. By H. Coates. With a chapter on Scottish Folk-music by H. Wiseman. Pp. xx + 244 + 32 plates. (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1923.) 18s. net. (4) The Highlands with Rope and Rucksack. By Dr. E. A. Baker. Pp. 253 + 19 plates. (London: H. F. and G. Witherby, 1923.) 12s. 6d. net.