However one of the authors in this category who, like Durrell, wrote with a rare sense of humour was Edward Hamilton Aitken, popularly known as EHA.

Both men had much in common; they were born in India (Aitken in Satara in 1851 and Durrell in Jamshedpur in 1925), they each were stylish and much-loved writers and more importantly— Aitken, like Durrell, was nuts on nature.

Two of EHA’S books— The Tribes on My Frontier and A Naturalist on the Prowl— have been released this year by Penguin India. They have an introduction by Ruskin Bond, himself a keen admirer of the author’s work.

Aitken received his education from Bombay University where he proved to be a brilliant student. The reader had better open a Latin dictionary while going through his books as they are crammed with terms such as atram ingluviem and Cremes aux fourmis! This is to be expected since EHA was something of an expert in the language and throws classical Latin about as liberally as a rice farmer scatters seed; but don’t let this deter you from the sheer elegance of his writing— simultaneously insightful and witty.

Aitken’s subject could range from a ‘leaf-green caterpillar’ to the domestic moorgee. All the creatures in his books are invested with qualities so engaging, one will never look at them in the same way again. Take his observations on the crab — “A crab is not like a lower animal... All his avocations are carried on as if he had fixed principles and his whole behaviour is so deliberate and decorous that you could feel almost sure, if you could get a proper introduction to him, he would shake hands with you.”

He appears to detest the common crow with a special passion and bluntly relegates it to the rank of ‘callow criminal’. For example (pg 45 of The Tribes on my Frontier)— “Only when in thought, we go back to happy rambles away from the hum of men... is the horrid phantom absent ... The crow is a fungus of city life, a corollary to man and sin” and on pg 48, “... The claims of a hungry family will drive crows to even more reckless wickedness than their own inbred depravity.”

This is naturalist writing with a difference... a difference of opinion! Most naturalists look at the world around them with a ferocious inquisitiveness coupled with a benign affection for even such creepy crawlies as scorpions and tadpoles.

EHA has the requisite inquisitiveness (he knows the biology of different species and their most intimate secrets) but has the exquisite’s disdain for some of their characters. While this may not be kosher in the traditional naturalist’s handbook, it is hugely enjoyable to the common reader, who cannot help but share some of his dislike for black rats, hairy-legged spiders and other pesky critters of the natural ‘under’world.

Sample this for instance (The Tribes on my Frontier, pg 41), typical EHA —  “... The brown ant is thickset, heavy, slow and phlegmatic ... Add to this ... it smells unsavoury and tastes nasty...”

The short discourses on different topics are enlivened by sketches that EHA made and like his writing they are unique, rich in detail and amusing. What is so refreshing about Aitken is that, in his book, all things wild are not necessarily ‘wonderful’, a rather surprising view to take but one abundantly interesting.