" RIVIERA NOTES."*
NEWSPAPER readers are accustomed at this time of the year to see "Riviera Notes," which consist of singularly unprofit- able matter; mere lists of English, American, and Russian names of people dining and playing polo or golf, doing in that delightful climate just what they would like to do at home if the sunshine were as bright as it is in the south of France. In striking contrast a small volume has appeared which shows the kind of " notes " that two intelligent women can take in a few short visits to the country. The modest title implies that no very profound research must be expected, but the book has just the attractiveness which should stimulate the ordinary visitor to confess his ignorance of the country in which be takes his pleasure, and to realize hoW easily he might find fasci- • Common Objects of the Riviera. By I. and H. Chamberlain. With plate* from drawing. by I. Chamberlain. London; G. Boutledge sad Sena. [So Ott. net.] nating interests in the people and natural objects around him. Compared with some of the French books on the subject or the English volumes of Miss Hawkins-Dempster, it is a slight and unpretentious work, but it should attract many readers who do not trouble themselves with more solid books such as M. Lentheric's, or the archaeological writings of Mr. Bullock-Hall. But on one point the authors are thorough, namely, on the flora of the district. They give us a botanical table of the flowers they have found, arranged in a scholarly manner, on the plan of Bentham and Hooker's standard work, and it seems surprisingly exhaustive. For example, it will astonish many amateur botanists to learn that the writers found thirty varieties of orchids. Possibly an inherited taste has developed a particular flair in this direction. It would be useless to criticize the application of the compara- tive term " rare," but their mention of certain spots may recall to some readers a profusion of the yellow iris, for instance, which ie pronounced rare. Also they record that they could never find the pink-and-white wild tulip. The present writer could tell them of a field which they must many times have passed where he has found them in plenty a very few years ago. We are told of the trees, indigenous and imported, of which they have much to say that is of interest. But we miss any reference to the glorious Spanish chestnuts of the little- known Montagnes des Maures, a district that is full of interest and delight in many different ways. Nor do they mention the Casuarina, called, we believe, by the French micocoulier, in confusion with the nettle tree, and by many travellers the she-oak, from a corruption of the native Australian name. Miss I. Chamberlain's coloured plates are distinctly above the average of botanical painting and reproduction, and illustrate about fifty different flowers. We have discovered no botanical errors, and only one petty misprint, Hyacinthus Born anum (p. 68).
The observations which are chronicled were taken during one winter spent at Valescure and subsequent sojourns at Cannes, with at least one visit to Mentone. The writers seem to have treated the town itself of Cannes, with its sophisticated streets and hotels, in the right spirit, namely, as an excellent resting-place from which to survey the surrounding country. But they give us one chapter on the " Cannes Gardens?' Many a visitor arriving from England and plunged into one of the better villa gardens on a bright sunlit day must have thought it a gaudy sight, reminding him of the scene-painter's craft (if Mr. Gordon Craig will allow the old-fashioned con- notation). But it only requires two or three days of association with the brilliant light, the clear atmosphere, and the bright colours of nature in the sea and rocks to realize that the gardens are well suited to their surroundings. The highly coloured beds, the mimosas and palms, are in harmony with the place, however " showy " they may seem at first to the unaccustomed eye. The unrivalled garden created by Sir Thomas Hanbury at La Mortola is always to be excepted from accounts of Riviera gardens, for that is first and fore- most a wonderful botanical museum, and a pleasure-ground in the second place, a fact expressed by a Cannes gardener in his description of it as " very interesting, but not a gentleman's garden" ! By staying as late as May the authors had advan- tages over many flower collectors, but also the disillusion of seeing some of these gardens in " undress." Of the rural delights of Yalescure they evidently made full use. They found the part of the particular stream where the tortoises most enjoy themselves ; they watched the "procession cater- pillars," and some of the most delightful pages in the book are translated from M. Fabre's vivacious account of how he demoralized a community of these creatures which have so strangely developed the spirit of "follow-my-leader." They noticed that the Malinfernet Pass is the spot where the asphodel grows most freely. It is wonderfully beautiful in masses seen from a distance, but one must agree that a single flower in one's -hands seems scarcely worthy of the lovely name and its associations. In the same pass they must have seen hollies, which are rare elsewhere in the neighbourhood. They observed the gallant sportman setting forth with muzzle-loader and dog of a Sunday morning, and content to return with a slaughtered finch or even with the emotion of having heard a rustle which might have been due to a wild boar. They failed to find the trap-door spiders which do live at Yalescure, though they saw them elsewhere. The golden-crested wren and the rarer kingfisher are other Riviera visitors of whom they make no mention, and it does not seem to have been their fortune to see a hungry eagle hovering over the almost birdless Esterel, but eagles are to be seen there and have been known to take chickens from the farm on the Valescure golf-course in the early morning. But little of the life around them has escaped the authors, and we only wish the book were twice as long, for such observers would not be dull if they told us twice as much about these " common objects." We hope that they may yet spend many winters on the Riviera, and perhaps they will give us a similar volume which will set forth with the same simple directness the history of man upon that coast. "Every schoolboy" who spends a Christmas or Easter holiday there knows the Roman remains at Frejus, its arena and aqueducts, some have traced the very quays of the port to which the Roman ships were fastened, but few visitors could trace the Via Aurelia by Antipolis, Mons /Egitna, and Forum Julii. Do our authors know of a milestone of that great road hidden in the cistus close to Valescure P Have they visited the remains of an ancient, probably Ligurian, encampment close to Cannes P Such capable exponents create an appetite for further treatment of local lore.
We cannot pass over the dedication of the book, for it has a personal note which will give pleasure to all British readers. It runs thus : "To J. C., whose never-failing interest in their expeditions and discoveries has been a constant source of pleasure and encouragement to the authors." On the base of Lord Brougham's statue by the Port of Cannes is the following inscription :—
"Inveni portum: apes ac fortune valeta, Sat me lusistis; ludite nunc alios."
The picture raised by the first two words of the weary lawyer and politician finding a haven of rest in the fishing village which he discovered, and where his bones lie, is marred by the cynicism with which the couplet ends. How much more pleasing is the dedication we have quoted above ! It points to the best solace for weariness of public life and for ill-health, the power of making the interests of each member of a united family the common interests shared by all together.
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