Claus the Fish, by the German writer Hermann Rossmann (Peter
_Davies, 8s. 6d.), is an extraordinary sea-story : as queer arid startling in its miniature wayas is Moby Dick on the grand scale. It deals with the adventures of a wierd web- footed creature who may be taken, as we are told, either as itselftliat is, as a fantastic reality, a cross between a human being and a fish—or as " the embodiment of the last dreams of a drowning fisherman." We suspect the imagined dreams of a drowning man, and the subsequent wanderings of his body about-the ocean, to have been what was first in the author's mind : and the " fish "-is a mere vehicle for the expression of the "Sea's desolation, its loneliness, horror and beauty as revealed- to the human mind in this ultimate close acquaint- anceship :- but, in any case, the story is an enthralling and remarkably original One; and no one interested in sea-stories in general; and good writing in particular, should miss it. The lonely drifting far-from land : the meetings with seals, gulls, shipS driving on the rocks, butterflies lost in mid-ocean ; the deseriptions of catching fish among the corals—it is all done with a real • power of imagination, and with a rare under- standing of the sea's cold beauty and its indifference to man.
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