6 DECEMBER 1913, Page 11

A Week on the Eddystone ; Life on a Lightship

; Twelve Days an a Trawler. By A. 0. Cooke. (Henry Frowde and Hodder and Stoughton. is. 6d. net each.)—Mr. Cooke has chosen a lighthouse, a lightship, and a trawler as temporary residences, and has set down all that he found of interest in language simple enough for young readers. Indeed his explanations are so ingenuous sometimes that one feels his hosts could hardly have refrained from "pulling his leg" if he put to them such simple questions as some of those which be explains here. But this was plainly not the ease, for he made very good friends with the crews of the Plymouth trawler fishing off the West Coast of Ireland and of the West Goodwin lightship and with his three companions on the Eddystone. He extracted from them every kind of information, and passes it on well digested; facts of the history of lighthouses and lightships, natural history, the mechanism of the lights and of an " otter " trawl. He tells of fishes and fishermen, their methods and manners, of views and of vessels, of delights and dangers. He seems to have joined in almost everything himself, though we do not think he handled a gurnard on the trawler. It is quite excusable that he should sometimes repeat himself in these three volumes : he has caught hold of three kindred subjects, each of which is sure to interest boys.