Welsh Journals

are less than twenty pages on the latter, and there are references to stragglers recorded in British waters the Ringed, Harp, Bearded and Hooded Seals, the Walrus, and Californian Sea-lions that had escaped from coastal zoos into the North Sea. There is a chapter on the conservation of British seals which traces the progress of the Grey Seals Protection Acts and discusses the management plan under which the breeding population of Grey Seals on the Farne Islands are culled. It adds ominously that some control measures may become necessary in West Wales. Seal Woman: Ronald Lockley: Rex Collings: £ 2.50. Richard Adams, the author of Watership Down, acknowledges his debt to R. M. Lockley for his "remarkable book The Private Life of the Rabbit". One wonders whether Mr. Lockley's other Survival book Grey Seal, Common Seal had a hand in motivating its own author to take a similar flight of fancy in Seal Woman. The book was conceived while the author was on duty for Naval Intelligence during the Second War, searching out remote landing places for enemy submarines. It was above the lonely strand of the fictitious Kincalla that Shian came, singing the 'Song of the Seal Woman'- Song of my heart, 0 Sea, thou art singing: In the spring he will come my prince from the ocean We shall follow the seals on the wings of the waves, My prince and I shall ride the saddles of white horses, He will crown me his queen in the far Holm of the Seas. And so it happens. He falls in love with her and becomes her prince. The story draws from the mythology of mermen, the sagas of Scandinavia and the ancient anecdotage of the Irish, whose forebears, they say, were half Viking, half seal. It is quite fascinating reading. The Pembrokeshire Coast Path: John H. Barret: H.M.S.O.: £ 2.50. This is the long-awaited guide-book to a coast path that took twenty years to complete: those landowners who employed every ruse to delay its completion rightly receive the author's lash. The path is traced, beginning at St. Dogmaels, on 21/2 ins. O.S. maps with additional references by the author. Facing each map are the notes on features, and comments ('not necessarily those of the Countryside Commission', who publish the book as their Long-Distance Footpath Guide No. 3). The notes are essentially brief: one constantly wants more. Nevertheless, they are varied-geological, prehistoric, coastal trade, hagiological (perhaps to excess), flowers and wild life (some will criticise disclosure of breeding sites, etc.). There are some errors, and some statements are already out of date. The West Wales Naturalists' Trust deserves a correction, for it raised all the money to purchase Skomer Island, not 'half as stated. The book is gaily illustrated with local scenes by Ronald Maddox, and nature drawings by Harry Titcombe, and is, of course, the essential companion while walking the Coast Path.