Abstract
THIS is a good book, but misses being a very good book. It is full of interesting facts, but they are not always well arranged. Mr. Clark's knowledge is extensive and often peculiar, but he has not digested it well: too many of the chapters read like the outpourings of a notebook, not free from unnecessary repetition. Finally, the numerous figures are so dispersed through the book that they can scarcely be said to illustrate the text: thus, opening at random, one finds thirty-four drawings of “biting and parasitic flies, and some maggots and pupae of flies” facing a page that deals with flying-fish. Biting flies were discussed some hundred pages earlier, but there was in the text no reference to these figures; for any further explanation of them one must hark back to the list of text-figures. Possibly the publishers are responsible for this lack of co-operation, for it is a too common fault in popular books written to order. None the less, the authors are to blame, and it is surprising to find a man of Mr. Clark's vigorous personality permitting this indignity.
Animals of Land and Sea.
By Austin H. Clark. (Library of Modern Sciences.) Pp. xxxiv + 276. (New York: D. Van Nostrand Co.; London: Chapman and Hall, Ltd., 1925.) 15s. net.
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Our Bookshelf. Nature 118, 259 (1926). https://doi.org/10.1038/118259a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/118259a0