13 AUGUST 1904, Page 23

The Natural History of Some Common Animals. By Oswald H.

Latter. (Cambridge University Press. 5s. net.)—Our notice of this volume is limited, for obvious reasons, to its popular aspect. It deals with subjects with which we all have some kind of acquaintance, favourable, hostile, or neutral. Crayfish and dragon flies, wasps and cockroaches, snails, frogs, toads, and newts, may be taken to represent these classes. The reader will find, though his scientific curiosity be of the slightest, much that is most interesting in Mr. Latter's volume. He will be disabused of some popular errors, and will probably have his faculty of surprise not a little roused from time to time; but he cannot fail to be pleased. Mr. Latter has much that is curious to tell us, and he tells it in an attractive fashion.