The Log of the Sun. By C. William Beebe. (H.
Holt and Co., New York.)—This is a beautiful book and good to read. It is true that the " Log of the Sun" is not quite the same for this country as it is for America ; nor are the creatures who make up the crew, so to speak, the same. But the advantage may be said to be with us. America has all or nearly all of the creatures that we know on this side. One bird, indeed, she lacks, the most famous of all, the nightingale ; the cuckoo, too, is absent from the Western continent, but the cowbird fills its place, with the same habit of dropping its eggs into alien nests. Then there is the humming-bird in its various tribes, and not a few others. Much of Mr. Beebe's space is taken up with birds, but he speaks of other animals,—elephants, wolves, coyotes, do. We do not quite follow Mr. Beebe when he says that "the dog has attempted to adapt his speech to his master's and the result is a bark." Some dogs have a great variety of speech. Curiously enough, this variety does not seem to vary with the intelligence of the breed. The whippet, which is half a greyhound and has a singu- larly limited brain-power, has a quite extraordinary vanety of notes in his voice.
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