Crowded World

ZACA VENTURE -- William Beebe -- Harcourt, Brace ($3).

When they first encounter the works of Naturalist William Beebe, readers usually have some trouble getting accustomed to the strange cast of characters--the moray eels, zebra gobies, angelfish, filensh. amphipods, triglid fish, bubble shells, blennies, opaleyes, nudibranchs and other odd forms of life he writes about. In the Galapagos Islands, in Bermuda or on the Gulf of California; everything reminds Naturalist Beebe of the teeming variety of life and the consistency of its patterns of struggle; in the stomach of a sea bird he finds a half-digested fish, with a smaller fish in its stomach, while mud from the bottom of the sea turns out to be writhing with worms, crabs, starfish, urchins, snails, serpent-stars and heretofore unknown species. Not his best book, Zaca Venture presents the most crowded world so far, since it touches on everything from a 42-foot whale shark (the largest true fish known) to a minute feather-fly which lays its eggs and travels in comfort in the white breast feathers of the Brewster booby.

Zaca Venture tells, with many digressions, of a round-trip cruise of the 118-foot Zaca from San Diego down the coast of Lower California and up the Gulf of California to Guaymas with pauses for dredging, diving, fishing. Although it begins with an account of Beebe's sensational discovery that there are snipefish on both the east and west coasts of the U. S.--a discovery whose exact scientific importance escapes the lay reader--it quickly gives way to discussions of Mr. Beebe's first deep-sea fishing, a comparison of the flight of pelicans and cormorants, a spirited defense of vultures and well-chosen excerpts from the works of other naturalists. One of these, Dr. L. H. Matthews' description of the mating habits of the albatross, reads like something by James Thurber. Albatross mating, it appears, is "no rough-and-tumble affair as with the house spar-row"; the males "gather around one female and bow to her, bringing the head down close to the ground. As they do this they utter a harsh groaning sound, and the female bows and groans back at them." The mysteries and wonders which Naturalist Beebe unearths--his realization that his world of human beings is "only one among a host of many sizes and dimensions of other worlds"--are less stressed in Zaca Venture than in his previous books. And although his bright journalistic style permits little professional dullness, he sometimes drops offhandedly the names of fish so little-known that readers may fear he is pulling their legs.

Of some strange creatures on Clarion Island, he writes, "One was unquestionably a mipt!"* and in the same pool he saw swimming by "a school of friendly old abudefdufs" mingling with pale green surgeons.

* A mipt is Dr. Beebe's word, taken from Lord Dunsany, meaning a weird creature.

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