Abstract
A NATURE diary, even the baldest, is ever fascinating, not only to keep but also to read. It is undoubtedly two diary-like form of Gilbert White's letters that helps them to hold their place as the great classic of country and Nature writing. The present book inevitably draws upon itself comparison with that masterpiece, a comparison from which it emerges with all credit, for it is of the authentic Selborne school, detailing the daily happenings of the countryside with a gusto that communicates itself to the reader, touching on this item and that item with an enthusiasm and insight that brings illumination to the most everyday subject. Take, for example, the following remarks on the grey squirrel and the red squirrel: “One of the alien grey squirrels, now so securely established in England, was killed in Cheshire and given me a few days ago, and it is easy to see how the belief arose that it inter-breeds with our native red squirrel, although no authentic evidence whatever of hybridization between the two species has ever come to light. The one given to me was just changing its coat, and possibly that accentuated the redness of its fur in certain parts of the body; there was a russet streak along each flank and the same colour on the face, the hind legs, and to a less extent on the back.”
The Country Diary of a Cheshire Man
By A. W. Boyd. Pp. 320 + 15 plates. (London: Wm. Collins, Sons and Co., Ltd., 1946.) 12s. 6d. net.
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PITT, F. The Country Diary of a Cheshire Man. Nature 158, 928 (1946). https://doi.org/10.1038/158928a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/158928a0