Abstract
THIS is a charming little book, based on the authoress's original observations on a variety of animals and plants, and cast into a poetic form likely to interest children in natural history. It is dedicated as follows:—“To my Son, whose wondering child-eyes first taught me to look deeper into the workings of Nature, and to all the Children I know and shall never know, I dedicate these simple tales.” As we remarked when reviewing elsewhere the first edition, printed for the author in 1898, which comprised only the first twelve tales, whereas twelve more are added in the present edition, the book reminds us of the “Episodes of Insect Life,” on the one hand, and Mrs. Gatty's “Parables from Nature” on the other. The mode of treatment resembles that of the former book, and the general style the latter. A great variety of subjects are dealt with, and only one or two of the stories relate to spiders; among others, we note such titles as “The Tree Frogs,” “Pistil the Peace-maker” (a more elegant setting of the old fable of the “Stomach and the Limbs”); “Thomisa Citrina, the Robber-Mother”; “The Wedding of the Fly Ophrys”; “The Green Caterpillar” (a study somewhat resembling one of Mrs. Gatty's, but dealing with a more mournful phase of caterpillar life, an ichneumoned caterpillar); “Hymen, the Worker Ant”; “Nimble Nat, the Gay Grasshopper”; “Cocky: a London Love-Tale” (sparrows); “The Romance of the Water Beetle”; “The Lemming,”&c. The remarks on the lemming are interesting, and will be new to many readers. Here and there we meet with a trifling oversight; the authoress has travelled in France and Norway, and has forgotten to note that processionary caterpillars are not British; and the auditory organs (hardly “ears”) of grasshoppers are situated, not in the hind legs, but in the front legs.
Spiderland.
By Rose Haig Thomas. Pp. viii + 227. (London: Grant Richards, 1902.) Price 5s.
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K., W. Spiderland . Nature 66, 270 (1902). https://doi.org/10.1038/066270a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/066270a0