(1) Far Away and Long Ago A History of My Early Life (2) Jungle Peace (3) The Ledge on Bald Face

Abstract

(1) THERE is much of the old-time naturalist in “Far Away and Long Ago,” by that G.O.M. of natural history, Mr. W. H. Hudson. It is a simple story, the recollections of his early life on the savannahs of the Argentine. We can imagine the estancia, with its poplars and willows, and with its flowery orchard lying isolated on the lonely downs. The whole was protected by a broad moat, and must have been a veritable oasis to woodland birds in what otherwise was to them an inhospitable land. Here Hudson made friends of birds, beasts, and trees, each one to him acquiring its own individuality: the cowbird parasitical like the cuckoo; the red willow, with its pair of tyrant birds, ever ready to attack the wandering hawk; green paroquets; peaches in blossom, loveliest of sights, and a proper bandstand for flocks of singers. The armadillo and the opossum were burrowers, the latter, with its children, giving hospitality to pit vipers, most malignant of snakes. Here and there, on the plains, were viscacha villages, immense badger-like earths of a large rodent now getting extinct. The house was an old one, a relic of the early Spanish settlers, tillers of the ground, later driven to the herdsman or guacho life. As to the fenman the fens are the most beautiful of all lands, so to Hudson his pampas colours of yellow to rust, the latter produced by gfant thistles, are beyond compare, their serenity disturbed only by the occasional pampero (hurricane) from the Southern Ocean. He was clearly a lonely boy, and it is not difficult to see how he made friends with Nature.

(1) Far Away and Long Ago. A History of My Early Life.

By W. H. Hudson. Pp. xii + 332. (London: J. M. Dent and Sons, Ltd., 1918.) Price 15s. net.

(2) Jungle Peace.

By William Beebe. Pp. 297. (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1918.)

(3) The Ledge on Bald Face.

By Major C. G. D. Roberts. Pp. 255. (London: Ward, Lock, and Co., Ltd., 1918.) Price 5s. net.