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Major Radclyffe Dugmore is deservedly famous among big- game hunters and the public at large for his beautiful photo- graphs of wild life ; and he has done more, perhaps, than any other individual to end the old cruel and senseless idea that sport is associated with slaughter. In the Heart of the Northern Forests (Chatto and Windus, £1 Is.) is his latest volume, dealing with beavers, wild goats, sheep, moose, caribou, porcupine and opossums found in the forests of North America. The chapter on beavers is extremely entertaining : Major Dugmore gives diagrams to show how these extraordinary little animals cut a canal to make a short cut between their home and their food supply, and photographs displaying a breach made deliberately in a dam during a flood to minimize water-pressure. Although the beaver's brain is little convoluted, and therefore physiologically a simple one, it would seem as if works such as these could not be undertaken unless they were possessed of a high order of intelligence. To say that this book is an ideal Christmas present for a boy or girl is to do it less than justice. It is a classic of its kind, and will be a delight for at least a generation to all nature lovers, of whatever age.
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