Life by the Sea-shore: an Introduction to Natural History

Abstract

MANY of the people who now live on he coast, or of the constantly increasing numbers who periodically migrate for a few weeks to the sea-side, must have often felt the need of just such a book as the one before us. It is suited to the junior student or the amateur who as yet knows little or nothing of marine life; it is moderate in size and price, and contains a wonderful amount of information; it is almost as refreshing as a dip in the briny itself, and in the treatment of its subject-matter it reminds us of Charles Kingsley's “Glaucus” and of Philip Gosse's “Year at the Shore,” and other charming works of a former generation. We in Britain are a maritime people, we owe much to the sea, and we boast on all appropriate occasions of our connection with it. Surely, then, we ought all of us to have some elementary knowledge of oceanography—of our seas and their ways and their inhabitants. British naturalists in the past have done much to enrich marine zoology by splendid monographs, such as those of the Ray Society and some of Van Voorst's series; but the public at the sea-side cannot be expected to read monographs—or to understand them if they did—and the volumes of Gosse are out of print, and moreover are somewhat antiquated both in nomenclature and science. Life by the Sea-shore: an Introduction to Natural History. By Marion Newbigin, &c. Pp. viii + 344. (London: Swan Sonnenschein and Co., Ltd., 1901.) Price 3s. 6d. net.