Welsh Journals

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The Naturalist in Britain: David Elliston Allen: Allen Lane: £ 9. This is the first-ever social history of British naturalists, who seem to spring from herbarizing apprentice apothecaries on drug plant identification excursions in Chelsea in 1620. They include eccentrics like Philip Gosse who recorded in his diary: 'Received green swallow from Jamaica. E delivered of a son'. They became established with the closely meshed dynasties, 'the intellectual aristocracy', of the Victorian era, which survive in the Huxleys, the Trevelyans, the Buxtons, the Cadburys. Natural history became popular in the fifties: 1000 people came to see Bee-eaters nesting in a Sussex sandpit in 1955; 14,000 queued at Loch Garten four years later to witness the return of the Osprey. The author's final conclusion, however, is that 'we should greet the new-found respect for natural history in Britain with a continuing degree of wariness'. The Living World of Audubon: Roland C. Clement: Hamlyn/ Country Life Books: £ 5.95. Audubon painted 1,065 life-size figures of 435 species of birds for his great work Birds of America. This book displays 64 reproductions of Audubon's prints, alongside each of which are colour photographs of the same bird in its natural habitat taken by the finest wildlife photographers in America. It includes the Turkey Cock, the first engraving of Audubon's work undertaken by William Home Lizars of Edinburgh, selected by the artist to prove the necessity for the use of double elephant folio. Mr. Clement, who is vice-president of the National Audubon Society, has written a sensitive introduction and the text for each species. The photographs do not always match up to Audubon's work which, after all, was described as "the most magnificent monument ever erected to nature by art". Lighthouses: their architecture, history and archaeology: Douglas B. Hague and Rosemary Christie: Gomer Press: £ 4. My first impression was that this book is a credit to a Welsh publishing house. The cover has a detail from the great mural by Rex Whistler at Plas Newydd, by courtesy of the Marquess of Anglesey. Books have been written on lighthouses once every seven years since 1792, but the authors claim that this is the first archaeological study. They trace the lighthouse from the pharos of Alexandria built before 247 BC and one of the seven wonders, and reveal instances of ruthless exploitation and intrigue. The Smalls, the most lucrative private lighthouse in the world was sold for f 170,000: the Skerries, 'a monument to the avarice of the proprietors', for £ 445,000. There is an appendix that deals with the problem of migrating birds and of lighthouse keepers as birdwatchers. Concern for the Countryside Charts: Warne. A series of five colourful charts, by John Rignall, illustrating five different environments Hedgerows, Motorway, Urban, Woodland and Freshwater Wildlife are produced in association with Project Spikey. They cost 54p. (76p. in plastic tube) from Warne's, 40 Bedford Square, WC1.