BIRDS RARE AND FAMILIAR.t
IN Untrodden Waysi Mr. Massingham gives us his impressions
of such rare birds as the spoonbill, the furze wren, bearded tit, the bittern, the kittiwake and the puffin. He has also some interesting things to say about the commoner species.
But his prose is so full of arresting artifice that too often the birds he would tell us of are hidden in the bushes of his meta- phors. Some of his most interesting chapters deal with "the hosting of the starlings "and with the difficult question
of migration. He puts forward the suggestion that all birds possess "a specialized nerve of migration " ; yet he finds himself much in agreement with Hudson upon the subject, who, in A Hind in Richmond Park, suggested that "an ex- traneous force" was at work and that the force was "in all probability terrestrial magnetism." His admiration for Hudson —and he was an ardent disciple long before "the cult of Hudson" set in—naturally finds, many an expression in these essays, not the least of which is the sympathetic esti- mation with which the book opens. His admiration will not altogether let Mr. Massingham say he finds no fault in him. To be sure he would like to wink at Hudson's curious dislike for the dog ; but his own attitude to that " carrion-flower " is soon revealed in one of the most delightful studies in the volume : "One's Dog." Although he does not say so, we feel sure, too, that he would just as good-humouredly dismiss Hudson's strange adoration of the pig. . . At his best Mr. Massingham can give us such living pictures as this one of the spoonbill :— " He stopped feeding, stood on one leg, with his neck curved and nape thrown back upon the scapulars, and presented an appearance of such curious and forlorn dignity that a gull, offended at it, rose and stooped at him, and up went the bill to ward off the downward stroke. But the gull persisted, forced him into the air, pursued him in circles and at angles for three or four minutes, and made vain and desperate efforts to keep up with the slow lift and fall of the great pinions."
And at his least successful (which is when he is most elaborate, • Old Dutch Pottery and Tiles. By Elizabeth Neurdenburg,1 - 14'1). London :
)3enn Brothers. I.£4 45.1
t (I) Untradden Wa„iii. By U.S. Massingham. I.S.fion : Fisher VIM.% [10s. ad. net.]—(2) Old Days in Cowart Places, ay Two Authors. London : Palmer. (7s. Od,
fetching his effects, as it were, from the furthest Hebrides) he can still hold our attention, though he may obscure his subject-matter.
The "Two Authors," notes from whose diaries form the substance of Old Days in Country Places,* are as artless as Mr. Massingham is elaborate ; but unfortunately they have neither his powers of observation nor his wide experience. Their book is little more than a pleasant record of the sights and sounds and circumstances of country days.
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