Round the Year : a Series of Short Nature Studies.
By Pro- fessor L. C. Miall. (Macmillan and Co.)—This is a quite delight- ful volume. Not every reader, it is true, will be interested in everything that he finds in it ; but every reader will certainly be charmed with it as a whole. ' Phi ' and 'Theta,' a mathemati- cally named pair of friends, dog and cat, are creatures whose acquaintance we are very glad to make. It is also desirable to have the scientific explanation of why a cat always falls on its feet. This is beyond our power to give in brief; let it suffice to say that the animal contrives to do it, and that in the space of half a foot. From cats it is not a long distance to catkins, the welcome harbinger of renewed life in Nature. The "oil beetle" affords the subject of an interesting study. Then we are told about the now common furrows in grassland that indicate the former presence of the plough. Professor Miall has something curious to tell us about the cuckoo, and mentions, in speaking of "breeds," a very remarkable fact indeed. The European element in Nature seems to dominate everywhere. "I know of not a single animal native to a distant southern country which can maintain itself in Europe." Is not this a parable ? As with Nature, so with man. Not the least valuable of these " studies " is on "Tennyson as a Naturalist."
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