ANIMAL STORIES.* ANIMAL stories, for which there is at present
a great vogue, fall into two classes : those in which the animals are endowed -with .human powers of speech and reason, and those in -Which they are not. It might be supposed that the nian of letters would incline to the former and the man of science to the latter kind of animal story. But this is not always the case. The old fable in which the animals talk and teach a moral is, we need hardly say, hopelessly out of date. Whether the beasts converse together or tell their own tale is a matter of small moment iirovided the author knows accurately the habits, instincts, and -ways of the animal he chooses to write about. That he will resist the temptation of attributing any human motives to his animal heroes is too much to expect, but Mr. Eardley-Wilmot is unusually successful in this respect. The nature of Mr. Eardley-Wilmot's new book, The Life of a Tiger, will be guessed by those who enjoyed last year his descriptions of Indian forest life. There are not many men who are more intimately acquainted with the great cat's habits ; and Mr. Eardley-Wilmot has had his full share of -tiger-shooting. He traces the tiger's adventures from the time when be was a loose-limbed cub till he becomes the father of a family. Then the tigress takes to man-eating, and at one great drive, with elephants and beaters, she and her cubs are shot. The tiger himself is caught in a pitfall, but escapes from the wretched captivity in a rajah's menagerie finally to meet his end when be has passed his prime. The sportsman's bullet finishes the tale, and it makes a good story, with much description of forest scenery and jungle life. Mr. Eardley-Wilmot knows what he is writing about, and that is, as we said, half the merit in an animal book. There are some • (1) The Life of a Tiger. By B. Eardley-Wilmot, C.I.E. Illustrated by Iris Eardley-Wilmot. London: Edward Arnold. [7s. 6d. notl--(2) Under the .Roof of the Jungle. By Charles Livingston Bull. With 00 full-rage plates and many drawings from life by the author. Landon Duckworth and Co. [Os. net.-I —(3) In the Guiana Forest. By James Rodway, F.L.S. Now, revised, and enlarged edition. With 24 illustrations. London : T. Fisher Unwin. U7s. 6d. net.)—(4) Afore Kindred of the Wild. By Charles G. D. Roberto. Fully illustrated. London: Ward, Lock and Co. [Is. not.1--(6) 7'he Monkey Polk of South Africa. By F. W. Fitzsimons, F.Z.S. With GO. illustrations. Loudon: Longmans and Co. [as. net.] good photographs among the illustrations, and . Miss Iris Eardley.Wilmot has enlivened the pages with little sketches. Some are clever, others moderately effective in lesser and varying degrees.
We pass from the old world to the new. Mr. Charles Livingston Bull is an American whose animal stories are well known to some of our readers. Under the Roof of the Jungle, which the author himself illustrates with a profusion of clever, fantastic, and impressionist pictures, transports us to the steaming jungles of Guiana. It was at the suggestion of Charles Waterton that he turned his thoughts to that country. Here, observing quietly with a sketch-book and shooting little with a gun, he found material for fourteen stories, cacti excellent as animal stories go. We must confess there is monotony about a whole volume of them. Yet each is written with admirable and often blood-curdling vividness. One describes the jaguar, who after a career of killing falls dead, bitten by the poisonous fangs of the bushmaster snake. Another tells of a plume-bunter and a colony of breeding ibises, shot out to supply a famous Parisian milliner. Mr. Bull is a good naturalist, a close observer of animals who knows what he is writing about, and, so far as we remember, none of his animals are endowed with speech.
Although the book is not strictly an "animal. story," whilst writing of Guiana, we may record the appearance of a new, revised, and enlarged edition of Mr. James Rodway's In the Guiana Forest, which appeared in 1894. "The book as it now stands represents forty years' study of tropical nature under very great difficulties." Mr. Rodway is primarily a botanist, but he has much to say about animals, and there is a readable chapter on the interdependence of plants and animals. There is, be declares, not a single wind-fertilized tree in the Guiana forest. Though written by a man of science, Mr. Rodway's book will interest the non-scientific. The struggle for life which permeates the organic world is the central theme round which he has grouped his studies.
Strangely similar to the book we noticed last but one is Mr. Charles G. D. Roberts's More Kindred of the Wild. His nine stories are written with his usual power, and the illus. trations which Mr. Paul Bransom contributes have the same fantastic and impressionist character as Mr. Bull's. But the scene is changed from South to the extreme North of America. We pass from Trinidad to the Pribilov Islands, and become interested in the love affairs of fur seals instead Of tapirs and ant-eaters. "The Harassed Householder," one of the best stories, describes the life at a fur-seal rookery. In " Mothers of the North" we have polar bears and walruses. But Mr. Roberts does not altogether despise, the introduction of human characters into his stories. In one we have a man kept prisoner on a niche of rock by a killer-whale. In another an escaped performing bear visits a camp of lumbermen on Christmas Eve. In the last story of the book, where the hero is a charming moose broken to harness, we have even the indication of a human love affair between Amanda Carson and Alec Ross. This also is a good story, and a little human love strikes the reader pleasantly. It is welcome after so much grim animal strife and bloodshed.
Lastly we come to The Monkey Folk of South, Africa, by Mr. F. W. Fitzsimons, the director of the museum at Port Elizabeth. The author writes in a simple and familiar style with a fund of anecdote chiefly suited to. delight the young, The monkeys tell their own stories, describe their. ways, and tell us all about their doings. Mr. Fitzsimons is intimately acquainted with the habits of South African monkeys both in captivity and in a wild state. Incidentally we learn some- thing of carnivore, snakes, birds of prey, Bushmen, Boers, and the other enemies of the monkey folk. The ba-boont naturally fill more than half the volume, being large, cone spicuous, intelligent, and aggressive. Like many another writer before him, Mr. Fitzsimons magnifies the monkey mind. There are a great number of capital illustrations. Some are the familiar plates borrowed from the Royal Natural History. Others, are photographs, some of living animals and some of stuffed specimens placed with a fair semblance of reality on a krantz or kopje among natural surroundings. The text, to the thinking of the present writer, would be more readable were it not cut up by numerous and tiresome cross-head- ings. The reader may also fairly resent being lectured by a baboon for indulging in alcohol and tobacco.
Monkeys have other habits at least as disgusting and repulsive. We are glad to see that Mr. Fitzsimons promises a series dealing with: each group of animals in turn until a popular history of South African zoology is complete. We cannot help thinking that his books would be greatly improved if he kept more strictly to truth and made his animals less human and less didactic.
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