KNIGHT IN AFRICA ' By C. W. R. Knight
How difficult to write a book about Polemetus bellicosus which will not bore the general public, annoy the ornitho- logist by lack of technical information, or exacerbate the austringer by pandering to the general public ! Yet Captain Knight's book (Country Life, xos. 6d.) has slipped between these dangers, and one cannot imagine a falconer, a bird- watcher, or a man-in-the-street, who will not find a part of its fascination. A falconer will want to know what feather was used to imp the (from the photographs) sixth primary—the book does not tell us : a man-in-the-street may miss the enormous technical interest of the pursuit : and 2n ornithologist may want to know, during the penguin digression, whether moulted penguins do swallow stones—as Mr. Kearton tells us—for ballast, or whether they are using them to clean their crops But to every critic Captain Knight turns a face of bland and friendly evasion. Posing as a rather stout and ignorant lantern-lecturer, subject t, heart-failure, he proceeds to tell every- body enough to make them frantically interested—but never enough to satisfy them—and to keep the general public reading just as hopefully as Mr. Seth- Smith. This is a book which nobody interested in birds or beasts should miss.
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