VOLUME 38, NUMBER 4 327

animals ever assembled, and therein lies its primary value. The data cry out for other sorts of interpretation than Eitschberger has given them. Anyone interested in this most exasperating of groups, and who reads German, must have access to this book. If you are not willing to buy it, have your institutional library do so. Otherwise, it will become another Muller and Kautz. Possibly the only academic library copy of Muller and Kautz in the United States is at Yale, which prohibits photocopying of interlibrary loan mate­ rials. The only way to get hold of the book is to go to New Haven or to buy one through an antiquarian. Will S.U. disappear in similar fashion? Eitschberger told me over a stein of beer that he hopes other people will take up and expand his work. That is good, for it must-and will-be done. Systematische Unter­ suchungen ... could be read superficially (and apparently was, by Higgins) as the de­ finitive resolution of the napi problem. It isn't. It is a beginning.

ARTHUR M. SHAPIRO, Department of Zoology, University of California, Davis, Cal­ ifornia 95616.

Journal of the Lepidopterists' SOciety 38(4), 1984, 327-328

DEAR LORD (BIRDS, BUTTERFLIES & HISTORY). . 1983. Hutchinson Publishing Group, 17-21 Conway St., , W1P5HL. Format 7" x 9%" 398 pp., including index & appendices. 90 pp. of B/W photographs. 12 pp. of color plates. Cloth bound. 14.95 (British pounds.)

One usually thinks of Lord Rothschild in connection with Karl Jordan or Ernst Hartert, both of whom were among his co-authors. In contrast, few people know the history of the Museum, nor the other aspects of his life which took place beyond the bound­ aries of Tring. This book, written by his niece, is a revelation. It is a story of one life, liberally embellished with ancestors and heavily endowed with wealth. It is the story of the workings of Parliament, the education of the young, of action on the high seas, and of wild creatures, both alive and dead, which previously had never been known to the world. "It is not easy to be born. The average man is squeezed out into the world with blood to lubricate his passage and wild shrieks of anguish to speed him on his way." So begins the biography of Lionel Walter Rothschild, 2nd Baron of Tring. At the age of seven, at tea time in the nursery, Walter suddenly stood and made the following announcement: "Mama, Papa, I am going to make a museum, and Mr. MinaI is going to help me look after it." This prophesy came true. Walter was the classic example of a child who shows little scholastic promise, but at some point becomes fired with enthusiasm in one particular field of endeavor to the extent that he becomes expert in that field to the exclusion of all else. A psychologist might have altered this, if such a person had existed in at that time. He was born to a mother who was strict and sensorious on one hand-overprotective and indul­ gent on the other. His father was never able to understand either his love for animals or his failure in finances. From the beginning he had a speech defect which resulted in .crippling shyness. He was tutored at home and rarely played with boys of his own age. All of this, added to the astronomical wealth of his family, contributed to his enigmatic personality. He began his collections at the age of seven with one butterfly. By the time he was 19 he had collected 5000 birds (2000 of which he had already mounted) and 38,000 Lepi­ doptera. Two years later, his family built him a museum as a 21st birthday present. This book mirrors the life-long curiosity of one man to discover and collect all the 328 JOURNAL OF THE LEPIDOPTERISTS' SOCIETY exotic forms of life, many of which are now extinct, or nearly so, from immense animals such as the Galapagos tortoises and elephant seals to the smallest of insects, the " and lice from bats, birds and mammals." Included in his final inventory were 13 Gorillas, 62 Birds of Paradise, 520 Hummingbirds, 144 Giant Tortoises, 300,000 bird skins, 200,000 birds eggs and 2,250,000 Lepidoptera. Obviously such carnage would not be tolerated today, but perhaps it was a necessary prelude to the conservation movement, of which Charles Rothschild is considered to be the founder. In any case, the variety of perfectly mounted animals and birds were, at that time, a revelation and a major contribution to the understanding of the animal kingdom. In 1889 when he was 21, Walter entered the firm of N. M. Rothschild & Sons, at the insistance of his father. He resigned in 1908, having spent most of his tenure not in banking but in editing his museum's publication, "Novitates Zoologicae," writing mono­ graphs and, with his salary, hiring collectors, planning and financing expeditions to remote places and corresponding with his collectors and crews. During this same period he became involved with two scheming women at the same time, and still worse, his antics with them were such that an unidentified (and financially deprived) peeress enjoyed a life-long income by periodically blackmailing him. The First World War depleted his fortune still further. His last decisive act was to sell his cherished collection of birds to the American Museum of Natural History in New York. He never told his family what he had done, and they only found out through an article in the Times five months later. After this deeply traumatic sacrifice, his ardour diminished. He died five years later. The author's obvious esteem for her uncle is felt throughout the book. She narrates the adventures and the misadventures of this enigmatic man without censure, without apology, but with sensitivity and candor. She seems to lift him out of her feelings and set him in a place in the sun where all of his many facets can glisten and come and go. The illustrations are outstanding. They are nearly a biography in themselves. Walter is seen at all ages, from adorable to cute to beautiful, to handsome, to distinguished. His mother is pictured in her coronation robes, worn at the coronation of Edward VII. There are many pictures of Tring Palace, Tring Park, ancestors and relations, one of King George V at Tring, and one of Queen Victoria-autographed. The Victorian era has never seemed more wondrous than in the two generations of Rothschilds which dominate this book-Nathan Mayer, First of Tring and his wife, Emma Louise von Rothschild and their two sons, Lionel, Second Baron Rothschild of Tring and Nathaniel Charles. Hon. Miriam Rothschild, the author, is a daughter of Charles. It is owing in large part to her sympathy that this extraordinary family is made so lovable. In the end one has not read the story of one man only but of a devoted family whose fabulous wealth was shared by the world in ways not always clear, nor even comprehensible, but certainly in this book, memorable.

Jo BREWER, 257 Common Street, Dedham, Massachusetts 02026.