Gerald Durrell's adventurous spirit and his spontaneous gift for narrative and anecdote mark him as a rare bird indeed. In The Bafut Beagles he describes a collecting expedition to the Cameroons, where, with the assistance of a pack of African enthusiasts and mongrel dogs, he captured almost everything from flying mice to booming squirrels. The unconscious humour of a supercilious toad or a hypocritical chimpanzee is only surpassed by the electric charm of the convivial Fon of Bafut himself. There are not many travel books with a more natural sense of humour