Some Books
of the Week Ma. E. W. HENDY'S second collection of nature essays, Wild Exmoor Through the Year (Cape, lOs. 6d.) is just as good as his first, The Lure of Bird-Watching, which we recommended in 1928, as being one of the best books of its kind published since the War : indeed, we are not sure that Wild Exmoor is not better, for Mr. Hendy, being a naturalist first and a writer afterwards, only needed practice to develop a style perfectly fitting his material, and that he has now had. In choice of subject he is just as fresh as ever : here are some of his chapter-headings : "June, the Hungry Month," "Birds' Eyes," " Exmoor Merlins," "Exmoor Superstitions," " October : The Red ,Stag BelLs"; there are twenty chapters in all, taking us through the year, and each one is distinguished by a fine truth of observation and beauty of expression ; thus, for example, of the robin's eyes : " Crepuscular birds, such as robin and night- ingale, have large dark eyes. The robin's, when he is alert and expectant, sparkle with a brilliance which must have been in the poet's mind when he wrote "—we shall not quote the verse, but it may be said that Mr. Hendy knows his poets as well as he does his birds—but at other times " the robin's eyes are not starlike ; there is in them a limpid and reflective beauty, the clear, translucent brown of a pool in a moorland peat stream, on a day when clouds gentle but do not blot out the brightness of a summer noon." Has Mr. Hendy, by the way, invented that verb " gentle,' or is there precedent for it ? The book contains a reasoned defence of stag-hunting, which sentimental people without knowledge of local conditions would do well to read. We say this although, as our readers are aware, we dis- approve of blood-sports, Mr. Hendy, however, prophesies a worse fate for the Exmoor deer unless they are hunted.
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