The Life - Story 0/a Foz. By J. G. Tregarthen. (A. and
C. Black. 6s. net.)—This is one of the series of "Animal Autobiographies." It is an excellent story and well illustrated. The "Fox" begins at the beginning, his cubhood. It sounds a little odd—we regard it from the outsider's point of view—that he should talk of his mother as the "Vixen," but we bow to his superior knowledge. He goes through the incidents of his life, in which, of course, the delights of hunting, as humans call them, but foxes probably do not, play a large part. But Reynard's life has other things in it,—love, for instance, and war ; he owns, too, we see, to that curiously wanton savagery, as it seems to us, of killing all the dwellers in a poultry-yard, when only one bird is wanted for 6,0a. There is always a difficulty in bringing these " autobiographies " to an end. Mr. Tregarthen does it well. We suppose that even a hard-hearted huntsman might spare a fox in the circumstances of the sedne where we take leave of our hero.—We may meittioa along with this a less ambitious volume, meant, in the first plate, for younger readers, but not, we imagine, without some 'attractions for their elders,—Tommy Pmith's Other Animals, by Edmund Selena (Methuen and Co., 2s. 6d.) Tommy Smith, on the strength of a promise always to be kind to animals, has the privilege of understanding what they say when they are pleased to talk to him, as pleased they are. Me converses with the Rabbit, the Nightjar, the Hedgehog (and Mrs. Hedgehog), the babchick, and other creatures of the wood and river. He suffers a little in his self-esteem, for manifestly they think but meanly of his intelligence ; but then he knows a great deal about their manners and customs. The "Other Animals," it must be under. stood, have characters of their own, a fact which it is always worth while for a writer to insist upon. We know that dogs and cats differ as much as men, but we forget that this is true of wild creatures also.—Yet a third book may be mentioned, The Adventures of Babe, by Muriel D. C. Lucas (R.T.S., is. net), on account not so much of the heroine, though she goes through some striking adventures, as of the hero, her wonderful terrier
Prince,' who must be ranked among dogs of the first olass.
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