NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS.
The love of the Thames is scarcely confined to Londoners; it is always the popular river to Englishmen. Its upper waters are best known to the angler and the boating man; down its course to the sea has travelled from time to time the enterprise of Great Britain. There is an opportunity for a journal to be devoted solely to this river, while a Thames Natural History Society only requires formation for its success to be assured. We therefore gladly welcome Mr. Cornish's contribution to this delightful theme.
Some of the chapters in this book will be familiar to readers of the 'Spectator' and the 'Badminton Magazine,' and some travel a little beyond the strict scope of natural history; but Mr. Cornish is seldom dull, and always instructive. A river can be studied like a vast aquarium, by those who will use their eyes with persistent method, and the author has given some instances of how this may be done in his chapter on the "Insects of the Thames." Very suggestive, too, is the one devoted to the "Antiquity of River Plants," and their animal frequenters. "The creatures which lived on these prehistoric plants live on them now, and in exactly the same parts of the stream. The same shells lie next the banks in the shallows as lie next the bank of the prehistoric river of two million years ago whose bed is cut through at Hordwell Cliffs on the Solent."
We are glad to find that the efforts for animal preservation made by the Thames Conservancy and various County Councils have been followed with excellent results. The Herons from Richmond Park have extended their usual nightly fishing-ground, which formerly ended at Kew Bridge, four miles further down the river, almost to Hammersmith Bridge, and have even been heard at Chelsea. Since the middle of June, 1890, large shoals of Dace,
