WANTED : GUIDES.
Letters reach me corroborating a lament of the scarcity of natural history guides. Personally I especially regretted the lack of any sort of guide in Western Australia, as in Newfoundland the procuring in the neighbourhood of any adequate handbook. Is there any region in the world where the autumnal berries are so various as in Newfoundland or where the grounaling plants colour so gloriously ? The majority would be as easily trans- ferable to Britain as , the currant which contributes even more colour than the maple ' or the golden rod, which is one of the commonest weeds. In spite of the growth of the cult of natural history in all parts of the world, especially where so-called Anglo-Saxons prevail, simple books about birds, insects and plants are everywhere hard to find. Very many of the islands are entirely unprovided. Where, for example, can a visitor, say, to Majorca or Madeira find any handbook that will help him to find or .identify the birds, insects and plants of these delectable islands ? Yet even a visitor of the most urban mind would like to flush a flock of stone-curlew from beds of oxalis and asphodel, when he took his walks abroad from the Moorish buildings of Palma ; or to know that the weed at the roadside was the blue pim- pernel. The gap between the general natural history of a big geographic area and the hopelessly superficial sketches in the more local guide-books has never yet been adequately filled. It would, I believe, especially if it is wished to attract the British traveller, prove worth the while of many a syndicat d'initiatire itself to make good this lamentable deficiency. A good luuldbook covering this set of virtues in a district, especially an island, may double and treble the pleasure and value of a holiday.
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