Welsh Journals

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Through the Badger Gate: E. Jane Ratcliffe: G. Bell & Sons: £ 2.80. Mrs. Ratcliffe's name is synonymous with the cause of protecting the Badger. It was she who drew attention to its plight at the federation of Women's Institutes Annual Meeting at the Royal Albert Hall during European Conservation Year, 1970, and won for it the sympathy of half a million women, for a start. 'Although he is our oldest and most beneficial mammal', the Badger has been persecuted by man in Britain for a thousand years. In 1973, however, after a tortuous course through Parliament, the Badgers Act received the Royal assent, and it is now up to us to see that its provisions are observed. The author narrates her experiences over twenty years, watching and studying Badgers, and succouring the maimed and orphaned. In her every word she reveals her love for that most lovable of our mammals, Brock the Badger. Ocean Wanderers: R. M. Lockley: David & Charles: £ 5.25. Undoubtedly the most beautiful book yet published on the birds of the deep. It describes, in the author's words, "the lives of those specialised flying machines, the birds which wander restlessly yet with purpose over the great oceans of the world". They wander in search of food and of somewhere to build a nest (for none save the mythical Halcyon has hatched its eggs on the waves), following an urge that began with the retreat of the ice caps. The Arctic Tern flies each year from the northernmost Arctic waste to the south polar ice, and encircles Antarctica before returning north, so that it enjoys almost everlasting daylight. One could go on a lot in praise of this book, which has drawings by Robert Gillmor and photographs to remember, like the Manx Shearwaters at a burrow on a wet night on Skomer Island. As the Blurb says: 'One of the most exciting bird books to appear for some years'. Environment Conservation, ed. Nicholas Polunin: Elsevier Sequoia S.A., Lausanne: S. Frs. 120, is a new international quarterly journal "devoted to global viability through exposing and countering environmental deterioration resulting from human population pressure and unwise technology". It is produced in collaboration with IUCN, ICEF, WERC and with the support of the World Wildlife Fund, for the Foundation for Environmental Conservation. Its advisory editors are the master minds of the ecosystem, and its contributors write with equal authority on the pollution of the stratosphere and on sewage treatment for small communities. This is undoubtedly the journal to provide the last minute information on the conservation of the environment in all its aspects. D.M.