Mr. E. G. Boulenger, author of Animals in the Wild
and in Captivity (Ward, Lock, 7s. 6d.), has held office in the Zoo for nearly twenty years and is therefore in a position to chat very pleasantly and with authority about various odds and ends of Zoo life. The book also contains short papers, written in a popular style, about such varied subjects as wild life in London, the moult in birds and beasts, the speed limit of wild creatures, and the balance of nature. One grants the interest of many of the author's observations, but one would welcome here and there a little more preciseness. To tell us that lapwings "liberated in Cumberland in May, 1926, were shot in Canada" affords no evidence of the bird's speed of flight ; while the popular tale of the ostrich hiding its head in the sand (which Mr. Boulenger utterly derides) has some support in fact, as anyone who has seen an incubating bird with its head flat to the ground will acknowledge. Might we hear the ordinary name of the London bird called "the willow-harbourer (p. 100) ? Ardraak (p. 221) for Aardvark (i.e., earthpig) is rather an ugly mistake, as is " diverse " (for divers) "matronly hens" (p. 41), and "inured into an indiscretion" (p. 76) seems odd English.
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