The Pond, by Carl Ewald (Thornton Butterworth, 6s. net), seems
at first sight to be inaccurate, for it seems to confuse the nest, eggs and song of a reed warbler with a bird whose white-barred head shows it to be a sedge warbler. Also, all the colours are too bright and definite for this muted little bird. But the book is translated from the Danish, and there are probably several species of warbler there unknown in England. The humour in the book is subtle, and the entire lack of sentiment is convincing. One may deprecate the manners of Mrs. Spider, who ate her mother and her husband : but one believes in her—alas ! Mrs. Reed-Warbler is quite Strind. bergian in treatment. It is a charming book by a writer whose works are already classics.
It seems ungracious to criticize Maya, by Waldemar Bonsels (Hutchinson, 7s. 6d. net), because there is a real feeling for sensuous beauty in the book and much charm. But men do not "build towers loftier than a queen bee's bridal flight," nor does the elder blossom in the blackberry season nor winter jessamine in August. And the nurse bee on the first page has not got the worker's pollen baskets nor honey sacks, yet the nurse bee is a worker. And when the beetle asks Maya to have "some rose honey" surely he is "pulling her leg," for the rose is a pollen flower and (one always thought) secretes no honey? But apart from this and from the too-much mixing of fact with fancy, it is an attractive, delightfully illustrated. book.
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