Nature

488 LEITERS IN CANADA toward the review of 1973 a year hence, I shall welcome word of any titles that should be noted, including books from 1972 which I have omitted through oversight. (WILLARn G. OXTOBY) NATURE Boyce Richardson, James Bay: The Plot to Drawn the North Woods. Siena Club in association with Clarke, Irwin, 190, $2.75 The title of this book, and the fact that this is one of the Sierra Club 'Battlebooks,' indicate at once that this lively paperback is dealing with a red-hot controversy. It is, in fact, a fundamental questioning of the value and wisdom of the vast James Bay hydro-electric and general development scheme now being undertaken by the Quebec provincial government. The author, a former associate editor of the Montreal Star, is convinced that the whole 'scheme' is a piece of political engineering, embarked upon without any proper basis of economic or scientific information, and with nO regard for either the natural environment or the native people - the Cree Indians - and their way of life. He believes that if this scheme is fully carried out such disruption of 'the last great wilderness of the eastern continent' will prove economically and humanly disastrous to Indian and white man alike. He bolsters his position by pointing to ecological disasters the world over which have been associated with huge dams; of these the Assuan Dam in Egypt is the outstanding example. What he and the Sierra Club are calling for is the guidance of future 'development' everywhere in terms of 'a new set of values' which will place the quality of human life and natural environment above so-called material and technological 'progress,' since the latter, as presently conducted, can only be considered as a road to ruin. Cassie Brown with Harold Harwood, Death on the Ice: The Great Newfoundland Sealing Disaster of 1914. Doubleday Canada Ltd, xii, 270, $7.95 This is a dramatic and devastating account of a major marine disaster, a gruesomely terrible episode in Canadian history, though at the time when it occurred (1914) Newfoundland was not yet a part of Canada. Horrible as the story of the loss of so many of the crew of the sealing-ship New- NATURE 489 foundland is it is surpassed in the authors' minds by their searing attack upon the inept and callous mismanagement of the ugly seal trade as it was conducted at that time. This is certainly no sentimental treatise in behalf of the seals, though pity for them is evident. No, it is above all a book motivated by a burning resentment for the way in which the seamen, the sealing crews, were maltreated and driven by an industry that was prepared to sacrifice men, seals, and ships for gain. Written by native Newfoundlanders , chiefly by Cassie Brown, successful dramatist and one-time newspaper reporter, carefully researched, this work carries with it a ring of vibrant authenticity. No reader of these pages who travels with these suffering men over sea-tumbled ice in the midst of a terrifying blizzard, watching them losing hope, dropping dead, dying in each other's arms except for the few who barely survived, will ever forget what he has read. This is raw historical drama and social indictment deftly intermingled. It sbould not be missed. Bruce S. Wright, The Eastern Panther: A Question of Survival. Clarke, Irwin, x, 180, $6.50 It is a curious situation in which it is necessary to prove the existence of an animal before it becomes possible to make a reasoned plea for its protection as an endangered species. Such, however, is the case with the eastern panther and so this book is first of all a summary of the evidence, involving scores of sighting reports, casts of tracks, pictures, etc., and then a very urgent plea for the protection of this magnificent creature of our wilderness. Few readers, I believe, will find reaSOn to doubt the evidence here presented in so able a manner, and few, it is hoped, will fail to respond to the plea. The realization that the panther still exists in eastern North America, both in Canada and in the United States, should be a matter...