Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 2 (1898).djvu/58

32

is one of those delightful books which, though on the border land of science, can be read by the naturalist with pleasure and instruction, and will arouse the jaded appetite of the general reader. It is the record by two naturalists—for we can scarcely choose between the one who writes so well, and the brother who photographs so fearlessly—of "adventures and observations whilst wandering up and down the British Isles in search of subjects for our camera and note-book."

Photography is now becoming a valuable adjunct to zoology, and a new weapon for the collector and field naturalist. To obtain an exact reflection of a bird in its natural pose or in some little known attitude, to portray the nest in its natural surroundings and with the incubator in position, is surely more to be desired than the effigies which can so often be truly described as "stuffed specimens." Whilst on the other hand such photographs will render possible the highest results in artistic taxidermy. But even more original work can now be done with the aid of a magnesium flash-light. We find on p. 233 the photograph of a Thrush at roost in a hedgerow, taken at nine o'clock on a January night, for which the authors claim, as far as they know, that it is "the first photographic study of a wild bird on its natural roost ever made." The portrait of a Barn Owl achieved by the same means in an old barn in Essex, and a view of a red underwing moth in the act of sampling an entomologist's "sugar" from the trunk of a tree, also afford suggestion as well as interest.

The volume commences with the narrative of an expedition made to that "paradise of British ornithologists," the island of St. Kilda. The brave and kindly inhabitants of this isolated region, so near our own shores, have an anthropological interest