... 1 1 I IT is only necessary, in a rash moment, to accept an invita tion to judge home-made wines at the village fête to discover how many there are how many, and how various, ranging from those that simply explode at the touch, to others which only burn slowly, and a few that are as delicious as the products of a French master. In her book Amateur Wine Making j (Faber and Faber 21s.) Mrs. S ...

... A LITTLE book of great charm is Tree Tops (G. Cumberlege, O.U.P.; 6s.), by Jim Corbett, with an Introduction by Lord Hailey. The introduction explains that this story of the Royal visit to Tree Tops, the hunting lodge near Nyeri which was soon afterwards to be destroyed in the troubles, was finished just before the author died in April last. Lord Hailey gives a splendid portrait of a man who ...

... Catkins and Cotton-reels TREES hold some sort of fas cination for everybody. The manner in which they depict the moods of the weather and the changing seasons never lets them pass unnoticed or be taken for granted. For this reason a great many literary works have been written about them, some plain and factual, others less informative but more inspired. In The Living Forest (Thames and Hudson ...

... The Humble Cattle Several decades of painstaking work have gone into The Aberdeeir-Angus Breed, a History (Aberdeen-Angus Cattle Society; £2ios.), which has surely emerged as one of the most comprehensive breed histories ever to be put together in a single volume. Every herd and every animal which has made any notable contribution to the advance of the breed is recorded ever since the breed ...

... THE TRAINING methods des cribed in Gundogs by Michael Brander (A. & C. Black, 21s.), based on discussions with Mr. John Forbes and Mr. John Brown, will commend themselves to any one with experience of gundogs and the photographs clearly illus trate many of the methods recom mended, but the weakness of the book, in this reviewer's opinion, is that it is difficult to find out what sort of dog is ...

... A new edition of Life of the Wayside and Woodland (Warne, 30s.) by Dr. T. R. E. Southwood, brings up to date the popular seasonal guide to the natural history of the British Isles which, written by the late T. A. Coward, first appeared in 1923. As Dr. Southwood points out in his preface, scientific research since the original book appeared has made it necessary for him to provide an almost ...

... ALTHOUGH IT IS ONLY two and a half years since the first edition of Farm Organisation and Management (Crosby Lockwood and Son, Ltd.; 25s.) made its appearance, the author, Gordon Hayes, has carried out a full-scale revision for the second edition which is now on sale. Designed chiefly for the student and those who will be farming for a living, and for those who help and advise farmers, the ...

... IT is becoming more and more widely accepted that, with the exception of a few individuals, big-game animals are only dangerous as the result of provocation by man. John F. Burger, who was born in South Africa, and has hunted in many parts of east and central Africa, specialising in buffalo as quarry, supports this theory in African Buffalo Trails (Robert Hale: 18s.). He writes, In parts of ...

... Little has ever been written about the ancient West African king dom of Benin, and therefore Ray mond Tong's Figures in Ebony (Cassell 16s.) will be welcomed with interest. The author, who spent four years in the province with the Colonial Education Ser vice, writes with clear understand ing and affection for Benin and its peoples. Besides painting a vivid picture of Benin and the Binis of to ...

... For 'lis the sport, to have the engineer Hoist with his own petard Shakespeare THIS well-known quotation from Hamlet has been applied to many and varying circum stances. Shakespeare, of course, uses the word sport in its original sense of a diversion from the rigours of work-a-day existence, of amusement or fun. But sports in the modern context of various forms of athletic competition can ...

... Bookshelf THE TENTH in the series, The Pony Club Book (published for the British Horse Society by the Naldrett Press Ltd.; 15s.), con tains, like its predecessors, some thing of most things of interest to the young rider. The contents range from advice from experts, such as Colonel Guy Cubitt's article on the misuse of artificial aids-- very neces sary advice it is, too-- to a highly- amusing ...

... ALTHOUGH it may seem at first sight that a book called The Technique of Competitive Swimming (Collets Holdings; 15s.) would be of interest to a somewhat limited public, the world being not over-full of competitive swimmers, this is not the case. ims volume by Bela Rajki is illustrated by the staggering number of 528 photo graphs, reproduced in such a fashion that almost every stage of every ...