Here is a book of short stories which are quite
unlike any other animal stories we have ever read. In Dwellers of the Silences (Chapman and Hall Ltd., 7s. 6d.) Mr. Alexander - Sprunt writes his stories purely from the point of view of the animal. There are indeed only two of them into which the human element enters at all, a trapper in one and in the other a zoologist who captures a polar bear ; and even in these the emphasis lies on the animals. Only long years devoted to this study could have given him so genuine an understanding of their habits and feelings ; only so could he have acquired almost a kindred sympathy and knowledge of their ways. This is particularly true of " Tawny-wing Triumphant," possibly the most moving of all the stories, m which he cap- tures the emotions of a mother bird torn between devotion to its fledgling and the insistent call of the winter flight • an owlet accidentally trapped by a falling beam in a deserted shack is unable to find release until, weeks later, another accident wrecks its prison, and enables the mother to lead it safely out of the freezing north. Only real observation could have written this story ; it is instinct with truth. The sym- pathy is not mawkish and sentiment never degenerates to sentimentality. Here, as in each one of the incidents, he somehow avoids making his animals think or act in a human way. It is the most natural of nature books, written with a happy simplicity and delightfully illustrated ; a book that should certainly be given to all children of sensibility.
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