Big Hunter

CARIBBEAN TREASURE--Ivan T. Sanderson--Viking ($3).

The cave's entrance resembled a monstrous mouth. Foul, fishy smells oozed from its eerie, greenish interior. Faint scrapings, squeals, slimy drippings could be heard far down in its inky bowels. Author Sanderson went cautiously inside. Clusters of giant grey bats whirred out of potholes. Crabs the size of footballs, their eyes bugging like periscopes, squatted on the floor, waved huge pincers, hissed like snakes. A luminescent lizard slithered into a dark crevice. An enormous red rat nudged his foot. Giant spider-centipedes scuttled across his hands. Blood-sucking vampire bats gnashed from black ledges.

Suddenly a terrifying Something, big and black, bobbed up from behind a boulder. It was Author Sanderson's shadow. The cave's incline steepened; he slid down & down. The darkness and rank smell thickened. Then he was standing among the carcasses of old crabs that had crawled down there to die. A half-buried hearth revealed charcoal; around it were large bones--a fugitive's, perhaps.

Such, in the dense virgin jungle of Trinidad, was one of the zoologist's paradises which Author Sanderson, 30-year-old British zoologist, described last week in Caribbean Treasure. He found others in Haiti and Dutch Guiana. Readers of his best-selling Animal Treasure, an account of animal life in West Africa, know that Author Sanderson is no ordinary bug hunter. A distinguished scientist, a gifted artist (the animal illustrations in Caribbean Treasure are a part of its charm), Sanderson is considerably more entertaining about small animals and bugs than most writers are about lions and tigers.

West Indian and South American animal life tends toward the quaint rather than the dangerous. The comical-looking tree porcupine, annoyed to find that he is standing on his tail, gravely tips himself over by pulling it out from underneath. Miniature anteaters cry when caught, curl up pathetically with face in paws, uncurl suddenly and nab your arm. Pea-size frogs croak like bullfrogs. One beetle is equipped with amber landing light. A bird sings sophisticated Gershwin melodies. Quanks, opossums, howler monkeys, capybara, sloths, tamarins, uropygi come in all sizes and shapes, display remarkably varied habits.

Author Sanderson and his wife (they were on their honeymoon) had no run-ins with larger animals. A jaguar watched from a tree as he cleaned his gun, fled when he said Boo!

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