will be that to which Mr. SETON GORDON, F.Z.S., has given the title
of _The Land of the Hills and the Glens_ (CASSELL). Mr. GORDON has
already a considerable reputation as a chronicler of the birds
and beasts (especially the less approachable birds) of his native
Highlands. The present volume is chiefly the result of spare-moment
activities during his service as coast-watcher among the Hebrides.
Despite its unpropitious title, I must describe it without hyperbole
as a production of wonder and delight. Of its forty-eight photographic
illustrations not one is short of amazing. We are become used to fine
achievement in this kind, but I am inclined to think Mr. GORDON goes
one better, both in the "atmosphere" of his mountain pictures and in
his studies of birds at home upon their nests. To judge, indeed,
by the unruffled domesticity of these latter, one would suppose Mr.
GORDON to have been regarded less as the prying ornithologist than as
the trusted family photographer. I except the golden eagle, last of
European autocrats, whose greeting appears always as a super-imperial
scowl. Chiefly these happy results seem to have been due to a triumph
of patient camouflage, concerning which the author suggests the
interesting theory that birds do not count beyond unity, _i.e._,
if two stalkers enter an ambush and one subsequently emerges, the
vigilance of the feathered watchers is immediately relaxed. Should
this be true, I can only hope that Mr. GORDON will get in another book
before the spread of higher education increases his difficulties.

* * * * *

I should be inclined to call Mr. NORMAN DOUGLAS our only example of
the romantic satirist, though, unless you have some previous knowledge
of his work, I almost despair of condensing the significance of this
into a paragraph. For one thing the mere exuberance of his imagination