EDWARD WILSON: NATURE LOVE?. By George Seaver
Dr. Edward Wilson, who died with Scott, Bowers and Oates in the Antarctic in 1912, was a naturalist and an artist of rare distinction. Many people who were charmed by Mr. Seaver's life of Wilson will be glad to have this supple- mentary volume, made up from Wilson's letters and diaries and illustrated from his delightful drawings, fourteen of them in colour (Murray, los. 6d.). Wilson was once sorely tempted to throw up his medical studies for art, and drawings such as the " Little Owl " and the " Blue. Tit " certainly rank with the best of their kind. Moreover, he could write. The scattered notes on birds and butterflies and flowers at home or in Norway, Switzerland and New Zea- land, no less than the pages on the South Polar journeys, are uncommonly in- teresting ; they show expert knowledge as well as a passionate love for all living things. Wilson's repeated references to the rapid extinction of the native fauna and flora of New Zealand increase our regret that he was not able to make the thorough study of this subject which he had planned Mr. Seaver brings out the fact that the fossils collected by Wilson in the closing stages of the last journey and found in the but where he and his comrades lay dead have proved to be of the highest geological import- ance. The sacrifice was not made in vain.
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