F SCOTT  FITZGERALD has a great deal to answer for. In The Great Gatsby he created the blueprint for the modern millionaire, its hero being the harbinger of twentieth-century excess and the influence behind a plethora of playboys. All have one thng in common: great wealth. In The Natural History of the Rich, Richard Conniff has sought to identify what it is that makes the rich so different from the rest of us, and how money shapes their behaviour and attitudes.

The author is a distinguished natural historian and proudly states that this is his first book on humans. The rich have long- been fond of using pseudo-Darwinian imagery - the survival of the fittest, the law of the jungle, etc - to -1 describe, even justify, their financial activities. Drawing