CREATURES OF THE TIDES

New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 888, 10 August 1956, Page 13

CREATURES OF THE TIDES

THE EDGE OF THE SEA, by Rachel Carson; Staples Press, English price 18/-. HE great success of The Sea Around Us firmly established Rachel Carson in the field of popular biology. It is only natural that she should seek to exploit success. Readers will find the same imaginative insight as before; but there is a new element, the interplay of the influences of land and sea upon the lives of creatures within the tides. The author has an acute eye for the memorable oddity: the sex of limpets, the spawning of the palolo, crabs in symbiosis with coral, the self-defence of the sea cucumber, to quote only a few. It is possible that the quest of readability has led to a certain looseness in the presentation. But this is a matter of little importance as the readers of the book will probably not be biologists, and will be, possibly, making. their first acquaintance with the subject. No one could wish for a more pleasant introduction. A leisurely traverse is made of the eastern coastal region of the United States. One has the pleasant feeling of accompanying, personally, a delightful guide. The illustrations help to foster this impression. They are numerous, accurate and have an evocative quality not often found in work of this kind. A few errors of fact mar the work. Only one is likely to trouble the casual reader. On page 192 the statement is made that coral is confined to the tropics. The Bermudas, of course, are ten degrees outside these limits. A much more serious matter is the woolly romanticism of the last chapter. An inquiry into the meaning or purpose of life is' a legitimate one, but "The meaning haunts and ever eludes us, and in its pursuit we approach the ultimate mystery of life itself’ would come more appropriately from Tennyson.

J.D.

McD.