SHORTER NOTICES.
PHOTOGRAPHING WILD LIFE ACROSS THE WORLD. By Cherry Kearton. (Arrowsmith. 25s.)
As its title implies, the principal attraction of this book is its collection of photographs of animals. The author is to be congratulated on the extraordinary pains he must have taken to snap his zebras, lions, moose, giraffes, tree- frogs, and other shy beauties in their grace and innocence. He has not adopted the dastardly practice of previously doping or wounding the creatures so that skill, patience and energy can be dispensed with. The result is that the animals in his photographs are full of vigour ; and we feel that they are there only for a happy second—as though we were looking out from a train window, or through a telescope, within whose small fields of vision the miracles of action take place. Together with the author's modest text, the pictures are a powerful- ktdictinent of the big game hunter, whom we have to thank for the imminent extinction of so much of the beauty of Earth's inspired creation. Speaking of Africa, he says :- " Fifteen years ago I journeyed from Mombasa to Nairobi, and was so excited that I could not sit still, for on both sides of the railway right up to within fifty yards of the train game of every sort abounded. Now, even in Kenya Colony, its last great strong- hold, animal life is rapidly disappearing, and the lover of wild creatures living, loving and roaming amidst their natural surround- ings has only a sense of loneliness and disappointment in place of former joy."
When will something be done by the Corporation of Mankind to stamp out these negative and vile manifestations of the human spirit—the big game hunters ? We cannot believe that it is an impossible task.
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