6 MARCH 1909, Page 26

SOME BOOKS OF THE WEEK.

[Under this heading we notice inch Books of the week as have not bees reserved for review in other forms.]

The Care of Natural Monuments. By H. Convents. (Cambridge University Press. 2s. 6d. net.)—Herr Convents is "Prussian State Commissioner for the Care of Natural Monuments," and this book is an expansion of a lecture which ho delivered in 1907 at the Leicester meeting of the British Association before a com- bined assembly of the Geographical, Geological, Botanical, and Zoological Sections. The term "natural monument" may be best explained by illustration. A rock which has been brought, say by an ice-drift, to a locality remote from its place of origin is such ; a spot covered with some unusual flower—wild lilies-of- the-valley, for instance—is another ; an eyot in the Thames, or such uncommon animals as the badger or the wild cat, may be so described. Now we all know how these and like things are threatened as a country becomes more thickly populated. Our author tells us what has been done for the preservation of such things in Great Britain and Germany (to which countries his book mainly refers), and gives us hints as to what might be done in the same line. It is pleasant to read that "the Corporation of London has perhaps done more to preserve natural monuments than any other body in the world." Germany, however, sets us an example in what may be called minutiae. The sea-holly is protected in Prussia and Pomerania ; a tract of saltmarsh near Artern, with some rare saltmarsh plants, is protected. The book calls for attention from Corporations and individual proprietors.