DABBLENG 1N THE DEW

The Wonder Book of Plant Life. By Henri Fabre. Translated Illustrated. (Bodley Head. 12s. Gd. net.) Prints from Many Trails: By H. M. Batten. illustrated. (Herbert Jenkins.12s. 6d. net.)

- Sanctuaries for Birds. H. J. Massingliam. Illustrated. (Bell. 5s. net.)

How to Enjoy the Countryside. Marcus Woodward. (Hodder and Stoughton. 2s. Gd. net.) By Shank and by Crank. By Edmund Vale. Illustrated. (Blackwood. I5s. net.) " dabbling in the dew that makes the milkmaids fair," says the ballad. And it's dabbling in the dew that makes the naturalist a success. No matter how much he knows how sweetly he " speaks with the tongues • of men and of angels," he will never make a naturalist unleSs he dabbles. One has come across work which was perfect, and yet was ruined by seine tiny slip, revealing the non-dabbler. For though the brain of an Aristotle and the style of a Pater were united, they could not win a smile from the brotherhood of earth, unless their possessor could also show a dewy chrism.

All these six nature books, though very different in scope, have this in common—their authors dabble in the dew. The seventh is a book. about nature lovers of the more purely scientific type, who dabble not only in dew, but in the life-blood of earth. Comrade of these is the first author on my listHenti Fabre. This Marvellous genius shows himself in quite a-neW aspect in this book—The Wonder Book of Plant Life. Except for. various individual and unmistakable Fabre passages, one might almost think it had been written by a son, inspired with his father's know- ledge and steeped_ in his spiritual atmosphere. Fabre is, as it were, on holiday. That almost -painful concentration and relentlessness of observation is not called into play as it is in the insect books. Ile has wandered into the world of green and golden mystery, where the secret is forever almost (but never. quite) revealed, where we seek our Host, that we may thank -Him for what. Fabre so beautifully calls

" a frail magnificence." For a time his benignant face is bent over the gentler doings of the plant world Hfitetories of gum and resin and aromatic. Oils. lie is here primarily

the observer, full of wonder. In- his own special proVince he

is not only the observer: lie sees, but he must look. beneath what he sees. He is not the artist..gazing on a lovely: head.

He is the surgeon with a scalpel. That is why in .this book,

where he allows himself to gaze and wonder, We- see a new Fabre—s-a Fabrc. who, instead of lingering with sorrowful

but stern truthfulness on the fierce minds of insects--and no tiger could be fiercer than some of these— tells us of the delicious stickiness of buds and sweetness of leaver " when the spring is in travail." •

Time book is an-account of tW plant; beginning before the plant existed; telling of the sleep of plants, the movements

of leaves, the unity -between the form :of the cotyledon and the structure of the stem (a fascinating and almost unexplored Subject, this union between the forms of various parts of a plant, as in the passion flower, where the pollen-grain, a rommd

bok with a lid, is almost exactly like-the centre of the flower in shape) ;' of the flow of Sap and the amazing mysteries of

fertilization ; of the bud which, lie says, " is the .plant" ; of trees so ancient that they seem like gods, and trees so young that they look out, trepidant, from their kindly seed- case ; and (of course) of the relations of the insect world with the plant world. And he also tells us why these things are, and how they come to pass. Perhaps the most remarkable sentence in the book is that in which he says that he believes plants to have " a shadowy vestige of the instinct existing in animals." That is not too wonderful for Fabrc to believe. lie is, in fact, one of the apostles of wonder among scientific, men.

Mr. Shepheard-Walwyn has a pleasantly conspiratorial way of saying, " This is his path ! " or " She always cornea this way ! " as if the badger's or the squirrel's coming were

a royal progress. And so it is, of beauty and innocence. The .most chumming description is that of the author finding

a sleeping dormouse underground, breathing " like a broken- winded horse," and of how he held it in his hand and found its fur cold. A study-window writer would have said a

great ..deal about the warm ball of fur. Mr. Shepheard-

Wahvyn says exactly what he saw, and the plainer the writing the more rapture his memories bring to the reader. Only the true naturalist dares to be terse and simple. The other is nervous as to the quality of his material, and he embroiders. For this reason one would prefer the chapter-headings to be just " Craft," " Mercury," &c., and not " The Spirit of Craft," because it is not of the spirit of this or that, but of otters toboganning and badgers making their beds that we want the author-to tell us in-this delightful book, inspired

entirely-. by personal observation. The illustrations are by well--known naturalists, including Kearton, and are first-

rate, like those in Mr. Mortimer Batten's short stories. These

arc as good as the rest of his work—which means rely good. lie has an artless way of throwing on the blank sheet of one's

spiritual vision a sudden enormous picture in colour. Iris settings of black rock and stag-moss, cloudberries, deer walking with gentle hauteur from hill to hill, all like a carving seen against a brilliant sky, make us catch our breath. In these stories, the author has conic up against the difficulty which all nature-lovers must realize—the antithesis between the naturalist and the sportsman. So, in " Krect's Great Lover," his own friend shoots the bird he has loved all summer, and in the story about the peregrines the sportsman hopes he has aimed badly ! You: cannot serve two masters in this, though the author evades the difficulty very well in " Pilgrims of the Sna' Brew." The touch of the psychic in the book is, I think, a pity. It detracts from the convincingness, and 'we can *get plenty of people to tell us ghost stories, but nobody except Mr. Batten can tell us his own absolutely real nature

stories, of which we can never haVe too many. This is also true of Mr. Massingham's writings about birds, which are practical in aspect but poetical in idea. Him Darwin would have loved these bird-sanctuaries where, Mr. Massingham says, " as one walks down the silent grassy aisles, the buttony eyes of sitting birds stare out at one from every angle." What a perfect little picture it is ! Everyone who cares for birds ought to read this book, which is full of magic, so that one has only to open it to hear twittering and flutterings and to see the preening of soft breasts. And whoever reads it will certainly want to go and make a sanctuary immediately. The splendid buzzard, the delicious linnet, and the guillemots, looking like gentlemen at an archidiaconal conference, have all had their photographs taken for the book. There are only two queries. The author says, " wrens like to swing about " (in' their nests). What wrens ? Not the ordinary wren, surely ? He also speaks of " grey-limbed alders." But alders are black, or, at least, all those I have seen are, and it is one of their spring surprises to clothe that blackness in the-most delicate of greens. The title of Mr. Woodward's book is both too didactic and too moderate for a nature book. Nature is either nothing to us, or intolerably lovely. But this he could not avoid, for the book is one of a series.

Mr. Woodward sometimes has the gift of magic, but his style is unequal. For instance, it is first-rate to describe the brimstone butterfly as "a primrose that has taken wings," but it spoils the primrose idea when he has the word seven times on one page (44). And his use of " urgent " is good, but when he has it a second time on page 24 its force is dis- 'sipated. The book is a series of essays about all kinds of country delights—sheep-shearing, rambles, old field-names, pleasant customs, and the sharp, sweet joy of grass and trees, rain, April and high summer. But where, oh, where, do they wear smock-frocks still in England ? If Mr. Woodward knows, let him in mercy say I Only a few times in babyhood did I ever see a smock frock worn by " an old ancient man," whose sons laughed at him for wearing it. Mr. Vale's essays also bring before one scenes of country life, but it is not only English country life, and one of the best is a description of how he journeyed in Japan to a far-off volcanic mountain. The spirit of adventure is in the book, and the joy of attained horizons. The first essay describes a walk from Herefordshire into Wales across a bit of Shropshire which is one of the unspoilt and lovely stretches of hill and valley still existing in England. Walking and cycling are the best of all ways of seeing the country, and Mr. Vale knows it, and also knows how to inspire his reader with his own enthusiasm. It is a sure sign of merit in a book of this kind when one wants to go and do likewise. The last book is valuable in a very different way from any of the others. It gives character sketches of scientists from the point of view of one of them. But though Mr. Osborn has many scientific books to his credit, and has written this one from that angle, it seems to have been popular, judging by the frequent reprints. And it deserves to be popular, both for its letterpress and its portraits. Darwin, Huxley, Roosevelt and Cope are some of the great men included, and I am sure all those naturalists now writing would be glad to think that they would find a biographer as brilliant, perceptive and sympathetic as Mr. Osborn.

MARY WEBB.