A FELLOWSHIP WITH WILD BIRDB.f A GRUDGING' estimate of this
volume might call the text a pendent to the incomparable illustrations of American birds with- their nests, eggs and young which so enrich it. That would be unfair to MIS. Stratton-Porter's account of her peaceful conquests with a camera of a kingdom uncapturable by any other means than through the qualities she brings-to them. She never moved the nests nor exposed the nestlings nor scared away the parents, as nature-photographers are so apt- to do, and she won, the confidence of the shyest species to so complete a surrender, to her patience, endurance, sympathy and woodcraft that they would use her as a perch before entering their nests and allow, her to stroke them as they brooded.
* Seneca. and Elizabethan Tragedy. By P. L. Lucas. Cambridge': at the
University Press. [7a. 6d. net.]
t Friends in Feather,. By Gene Stratton-Porter. London : Murray. ars.
netl Mrs. Stratton-Porter in her patient and vivid studies makes us feel that in spite of the furlongs of important print written about birds, we are only on the frontier of any real know- ledge and appreciation of them. The methods of the collector and the museum-specialist may actually fetter our understanding and lead us up a blind alley by causing us to view birds as fixed, mechanical units grouped under a system rather than as indi- viduals possessed like ourselves, only in a more volatile medium, with the life-force. The impression her book leaves is of the originality and personal resource of particular birds when con- fronted with the ever-varying demands of their environment. In England we have a prominent member of the British Ornitho- logical Union who has a collection of over a thousand tree-pipits' eggs. Is he aware that practically every tree-pipit sings and behaves differently from every other ? We doubt it. But Mrs. Stratton-Porter's book helps us to see her belted kingfishers, black vultures, vireos, catbirds, cardinals, robins, cuckoos, kingbirds, killdeer and others as actors in a drama whose language, so magical, we as yet imperfectly understand.
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