A Truant 'Peacemaker .
sporting Interludes at Geneva.. By Anthony Buxton. (Country Life. 10s. 6d.) WATCHING birds is surely theanost dmiable as well as the most alluring of hobbies, though recently I heard a distinguished man of letters contemn a great foreign secretary on the ground that
talked birds." This-was regarded-as a sign of lesser in- itelligence and a cause of diverted. concentration. Yet one of the most famous meetings of recent times was that eountry walk in a Southern county,- when Lord Grey identified for Mr. Roosevelt over a score of English singing birds.. The two Wen were the most ardent of all. believers in the friendship of Britain and the United States ; and it is hard to believe that their efforts were less fruitful because of their common affection for the willow wren. If this pair,of statesmen are of too gentle a nature to illustrate the thesis—did not Bismarck, the man of iron and blood, spend several hours during some political crisis in counting the number of times parent tits fed their babies within a working day ? Of the school of Grey, Roose- velt and Bismarck is Major Buxton. Whenever possible, even to the exclusion of proper meals and decent sartorial deliberation, he escaped-from the offices of the League of Nations at Geneva to watch and photograph the neighbour birds. The district is peculiarly rich, richer perhaps than even Norfolk; the home county of the tribe of Buxton, in species of bird, big birds such as the honey buzzard, or little birds such as the icterine warbler, or middle-sized birds such as the golden oriole. Some of us will nurse the conviction, though we know nothing of the facts, that a man who could observe so well and so acutely procure the means of observation must have been an invaluable member of the Secretariat of the League of Nations. He was apparently snubbed with some severity for endeavouring to borrow the ladders of a Geneva fire insurance company to fix one of his " hides," but lesser authorities were more sympathetic ; and the new cult of bird observation began to acquire adherents. Was not madness always taken by natives to indicate the presence of some superior afflatus ?
The occasion of the book is a proper part of its interest and, indeed, importance ; for even a member of the League of Nations should be librement occupe in the intervals. But let no one suppose that the writer of this volume—of these photo- graphs and those discoveries—depends on any adventitious attraction. The truancy adds a little gusts and lends the Swiss-French boundary an English air : that is all. What concerns the naturalist, pure and simple, and the multitude of those who are vicarious naturalists, is that the book is one of tie best we have had in a class of book that is new. The bird
photographer is the missing he will forgive the phrase ! —between the field observer (who often sees as in a glass darkly) and the aviculturist, whose observations are vitiated by the unnatural conditions. Both birds and beasts have minds too free and too little quiet for regarding " iron bars
as " a hermitage." The " close up " is a necessity for the photographer. In this art, if in any, " great is juxtaposition," and the photographer who must use a hide and work at a few yards of distance sees a deal that the field observer is apt to miss. Major Buxton saw a very great deal, much of it quite new. Some is preserved in his photographs which are wholly admirable—for he had a companion of most ingenious skill— and in what he writes. Now and again he allows himself to fall into a vein of humanizing patronage that would convert a bird into an inferior mortal, but for the most part the tale is straight and merry and very pleasant to read. One of its charms is that a number of the birds happen to 'be occasional Visitors to England. We have been just introduced—that and no more—and long to know more. The golden oriole, the honey buzzard (whose gay story is admirably told), the grey shrike, ,the hoopoe, and the icterine warbler are in this • class. Many of us saw these birds in France and wished they would come to England. The reviewer, for example, found nests of the little bittern by St. Omer, of the icterine warbler behind St. Pol, of the. oriole both by Arras and in the suburbs of Cologne. The birds, their nests and their songs are all de- scribed intimately ; and much of the observation is quite new, at any rate in English literature. Science is endowed, with' some fresh facts. Yet on one point—out of lesser knowledge— I would join issue. The song of the icterine warbler is over-
-much belittled...-thOughAhis; df course, is _merely a question of. taste, and therefor d - 'outside argument—and is misinter- preted. The bird is a born mimic, or at least plagiarist; and -includes In his vigorous warble the notes of thrush and lark as well as the rival warblers. Even the description of the very curious mauve-tinted scribbled egg is hardly adequate.- • • .Major Buxton hunted pig and hare and fished, and such occupations do not consent to a mutual relation with keeping the peace of the world so fitly as the watching of birds. They are told merrily enough ; but the book would have been better without them, for the reason that attention would not have been diverted from the very real and con- siderable contribution to our knowledge of the ways of birds. A valuable book is given the appearance of a scrappy and casual group of reminiscences. Nor are the photographs. which are good and amusing but' not supreme, essential to
the volume, though they-may seem its chief attraction. The human eye has seen more than the lens of the camera ; and
the written record is better than the pictorial. One quotation —from the end of the delectable tale of " Herbert and Maria" may be given as an example of the fitness of his hobby to thii member of the Geneva Secretariat :
" Will these pictures do what I should like them to do ? Will they persuade those to whom the pheasant and the partridge are sacred birds, to stay the• hand- of their keepers, from destroying, as they have destroyed, everything with a hooked beak and a sharp claw, without bothering to find out how they gain a living ? Surely a bird that comes all the way from Africa to eat ninety thousand of our wasps in a season is worth something better than a charge of powder and shot."
W. BEACH THOMAS.
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