To my mind, amongst the least forgettable books of the present year will be that to which Mr. SETON GORDON, F.Z.S., has given the title of _The Land of the Hills and the Glens_ (CASSELL). Mr. GORDON has already a considerable reputation as a chronicler of the birds and beasts (especially the less approachable birds) of his native Highlands. The present volume is chiefly the result of spare-moment activities during his service as coast-watcher among the Hebrides. Despite its unpropitious title, I must describe it without hyperbole as a production of wonder and delight. Of its forty-eight photographic illustrations not one is short of amazing. We are become used to fine achievement in this kind, but I am inclined to think Mr. GORDON goes one better, both in the "atmosphere" of his mountain pictures and in his studies of birds at home upon their nests. To judge, indeed, by the unruffled domesticity of these latter, one would suppose Mr. GORDON to have been regarded less as the prying ornithologist than as the trusted family photographer. I except the golden eagle, last of European autocrats, whose greeting appears always as a super-imperial scowl. Chiefly these happy results seem to have been due to a triumph of patient camouflage, concerning which the author suggests the interesting theory that birds do not count beyond unity, _i.e._, if two stalkers enter an ambush and one subsequently emerges, the vigilance of the feathered watchers is immediately relaxed. Should this be true, I can only hope that Mr. GORDON will get in another book before the spread of higher education increases his difficulties. * * * * *