Anyone who has read the encyclopaedic preface to Mobrj Dick
will thereafter value every detail that he can collect, about the life of whale .fishermen_ and of :Whales themselves. - Whaling in the Antarctic, by A. G. Bennett (Blackwood,- 7s. 6d.), is full of such details and prOves that although- the days of whaling with the hand harpoon from small _heats are over, the life still calls for courage and endurance almost to the same extent. Mr. Bennett deals with it from the point of view of an interested, semi-scientific spectator. Had there been either a little more or a little less science the, book would have been even more interesting. Time and again the author almost audibly suppresses a good story or piece of description for the sake of information which is neither complete nor always well arranged. Even some of the excellent photographs promise stories which are never told. Yet there is much in the book that to them of the true faith will bring sustenance, as well as one great fear. The rapacity of the companies which send men out whaling may be such as to cause the whales to die out, and their noble pursuit perish. There are few signs of that as yet, but so little is known of the factors which control the numbers of the whales that the fear is never absent. We may hope that Mr. Bennett's book will direct some public attention to the question.
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