advantage that all an author's works, except those published posthumously, go out of copyright at the same moment. As for the abolition of registration, the change has not escaped criticism. Mr. Oldfield contents himself with referring to the condemnation of registration pronounced by the Berlin Convention and the late Copyright Committee, and exHe adds, presses no opinion of his own. rather unguardedly, "The result is that an author no longer has to obtain copyright." An author had not to obtain copyright before, except by publishing his work. Registration only added legal protection to a subsisting copyright. Messrs. Strahan and Oldham, on the other hand, hail the change as "entirely to the good." But, as the columns of The Athenæum have already shown, there is another side to the question, and the passing of Stationers' Hall, with its authentic list of protected publications, has left a gap which urgently requires filling.

A New English Dictionary.-See-Senatory. (Vol. VIII.) By Henry Bradley. (Oxford, Clarendon Press.)

66

66

=

6

The early obsolete meanings," befit. ABOUT a sixth of this single section of beseem,' are properly placed first in 72 pages is devoted to the three important spite of the quotations extending to the verbs see, seek," seem," and their combinations and derivatives; while "self" and its following-without counting "selvage," "selvagee," "apparently from self-edge'"-and combinations with " semi-," take up more than a third, though only selections of the innumerable combinations of "self" and of formations with "semi-" have been included.

There must be more than a thousand words beginning with self- in the selection, a large percentage being registered in a dictionary for the first time. Most of the additions are valuable, and many of special interest, as may be inferred from a few taken at random. Spenser, for instance, is quoted for "selfas well as Scott and Mr. Hardy; Dickens for "self-assertingly"; Wood (1692) for "selfcide "suicide, another equivalent, "self-killing," being quoted from "Sheffield (Dk. Buckhm.), dated about 1721. The quotations show that Bishop Ken (about 1711) was much addicted to the use of "self- combinations.

assurance,'

The multitude of "semi- " compounds has been chosen with similar judgment, the methodical arrangement of the hundreds treated in one article being especially noticeable for its fullness; yet an index to the group would have been serviceable, and the same may be said as to "self-.' Among newly recorded "semi-" compounds are semi-bousy (1400)=halfdrunk; Bacon, 1628, is cited for "semiconcave"; nineteenth-century authors for "semi-feral "half-wild; and Mortimer Collins for the ugly and superfluous "semihiant," our objection being to its introduction into the language, not its inclusion in the 'N.E.D.'

first quarter of the seventeenth century, while current senses are found early in the thirteenth. The analysis of variety in meaning and construction is very close and clear, distinguishing more than thirty different developments. The obsolete transitive senses" To think, deem, imagine....To think fit," range from Chaucer's It was a ffairye, as al the peple semed," to "1627 HAKEWILL....Possunt, quia posse videntur. They can, because they At least as admirable seeme they can.' are the longer articles on the verbs “ see seek," and the noun seed," all and Old English; and that on "seize," from Old French, apparently first used about seise" 1290 as a law-term in the form to put in legal possession of property, office, or dignity; compare (from 1297).

The history of "self-respect," made clear by several quotations, reveals a rare exception to the usual tendency of words to change their meaning from better to worse-illustrated by the descent of seely' from "blessed to simple, silly." From 1613 to 1675" self-respect expressed "a private, personal, or selfish end," "self-love, self-conceit," but after a penitent obscurity of more than a century it emerges reformed.

The rest of the section-less than half

Trade fabrications supply" seltzogene,' selvyt," and "semola." There are also several terms taken from proper names: in the forties of last century the Sefton family provided a name for a veal custard," in the eighties for a kind of onehorse landau; a sort of bridle bit is called a "segundo" bridle or bit, after a Spanish writer on bridle bits in the time of George IV.; a French chemist, Seignette, gave an alternative designation to Rochelle salt; while Seidlitz and Seltzer (altered from German Selterser") are named after places. The origin of "seersucker,"

the East Indian name of U.S. imitations in cotton of a cool Indian fabric worn by American clerks and railway servants, "is for the first time correctly given" as shir o shakkar, lit. from the Persian 'milk and sugar. The article on the 1330 put into the mouth of Roland, and vulgar "s'elp," in a work dated about also quoted from Barham and Mr. Rudyard Kipling, is redeemed by the interesting Middle High German parallel selftir=so helfe dir, as well as by antiquity and association with a hero of romance.

Misprints and mistakes of any kind are so rare in this masterpiece of lexicography that pointing one out simply relieves the monotony of unbroken approbation. Under 66 selictar "The London Gazette No. 4236

is dated 1606, while just above No. 1985 is dated 1684. Most of the alien names mentioned above appear for the first time in one of the dictionaries of the English language, which are prone to exclude the foreign element too rigidly except in the case of technical terms. Several of Dr. Dr. Bradley's fresh importations are omitted in 'The Stanford Dictionary,' which was mainly concerned with foreign words and phrases.

Under semblant," adj., Caxton's 'Charles the Great,' 1485, is left the earliest quotation by the futility of obeying the direction, "1377 [see SEMBLABLE a., 1]," as neither the date nor is to be found where indicated; blant but we find under "semblance," 2b, "1377 LANGL. P. Pl. B. xviii. 285 And in semblaunce [v.r. semblaunt] of a the apple-tree. This serpent sat on coincidence suggests that a quotation dated 1377 was removed inadvertently from the "semblable" article as superfluous after the reference in question had been inserted. Under Fuller's "semnable" (for "semblable") there might well have been a reference to "semenaunt" (for "semblant "), where we find verse variant remlant " for "remnant."

the con

The innovation "seism," justly called in one of the quotations "the awkward word," might be dropped on the hint.

It is to be hoped that this incomparable Dictionary will not encourage the use of many unnecessary terms. Rather, while vastly increasing our grip on ideas and words, it should relieve the ever-increasing strain imposed on the national memory by the rapid and inevitable growth of our Vocabulary.

A further portion of T by Sir James Murray is announced for April 1st.

Alone in West Africa. By Mary Gaunt. (Werner Laurie.)

on

THE avidity with which travel books are sought after by the public is apt to thrust into the market a type of descriptive work which wilfully trades upon the reader's curiosity. The principle of "omne ignotum pro magnifico focuses attention on the unknown country rather than the qualities that go to the visualizing of it, and tends to submerge critical acumen. To avoid careful study becomes an acute temptation. For this reason, and account of the multiple and disconnected personality is invaluable in supplying unity impressions left by a book of this nature, and distinction and fixing a rallying point for the reader. Mrs. Gaunt's new book fulfils this demand. It is not so much that her personality is virile and commanding, as that it is sufficient to cut a way for the reader through the jungle of her journeys. Her salient capacity is a surprising and quickening common-sense; she refuses to take things on trust, alert enough to test all she hears and sees by her own experience. Our sole objection to her lucid and conscientious marrative is that she tends to lapse into impressionistic journalism. The purely descriptive portions of her adventurous jaunt through little-known districts in West Africa do not call for detailed treatment. Mrs. Gaunt started the Gambia up

"

from Bathurst through the ground-nut colony," a land of promise so far as productivity is concerned. She skirted Sierra Leone-" the white man's grave staying a short time at its dirty, illkempt capital, Freetown, and spent some interesting days in Liberia, autonomous since 1822, through the courageous experiment of America.

For the semi-cultured native she has scant praise, insisting on his boorishness, his arrogance, his raw and blatant egoism. Passing through the Guinea Coast, almost fabulous in its natural beauties, she reached Half Assinie and the French border. From Elmina, the old Portuguese mining settlement, her pilgrimage took her to Accra, the capital of the Gold Coast Colony; up the Volta to the Krobo Hills, infamous for the mystic blood - orgies there practised by the nearly savage inhabitants; over the Eketo range, and so to the border into the German colony of Togo. Thence she travelled along the coast to the best point of vantage and turned inland into Ashanti which has cost England so much money and so many lives; and finally

dipped down from Kumasi, its capital, to the Atlantic seaboard at Sekondi, where her route ended.

Like another district, which we deal with elsewhere, much of this country had not been traversed before by a white woman. Mrs. Gaunt's facile and rather gusty style

never drifts into mere enumeration of peoples, places, and incidents. Her versatility is such that, wherever she goes, she kindles her narrative with patches and splashes of colour. Particularly illuminating are her hard, penetrating comments on the prevailing fetishism concerning the West African climate. The theory current as to its unredeemed vileness has, she observes, crystallized into superstition. Officials go there in confident expectation of having their energies enervated and paralyzed by its humidity, and in a spirit of calculated disgust. They flout Nature by burning the candle at both ends, by falling into sedentary habits and a dumb mental resentment opposed to physical well-being. So the consequent ill-health is as much the result of internal as extraneous causes. It may be readily imagined how much the administration half-hearted and almost morose are applied of the country suffers when activities but to it.

Mrs. Gaunt's picture of the Germans as colonizers of Togo is in striking contrast to the verdict just given. Of their alertness, regularity, and cheerfulness she speaks in terms of ungrudging admiration. Their keen and trenchant methods of organization she opposes to the British lack of plan and casual attitude. Without attempting to draw invidious comparisons, she speaks of the presence of broad, long roads, the facilities for transit, the instinct for governing, the scientific warfare against sleeping sickness, the insistence on cleanliness and order, and the anxiety to preserve natural beauties, where England seems indifferent if the beautiful spot be not within the narrow

seas.

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So far as Ashanti is concerned, however, Mrs. Gaunt is less dispiriting. There a succession of zealous administrators have rescued the country from internecine strife. Strong measures have had the stimulating effect required. Concerning the vexed and seemingly inscrutable problem of the native population Mrs. Gaunt is more reticent than we could wish. Her conclusions are enigmatic, varying in accordance with the different status of the aborigines in different parts. The halfemancipated native, with his veneer of culture, still, she declares, retains the rudiments of barbarism, combined with the less agreeable characteristics of civilization. His isolation from both white and black, and his incapacity are complete. For the primitive majority she veers

towards the theory of a "benevolent despotism." That depends for its validity on the temperament of the despot, with whom unlimited authority is hardly favourable to the growth of sympathy and understanding, and is apt to become inoculated with the virus of Cæsarism. Such are the scope and achievement of Mrs. Gaunt's book-one fertile in suggestion, felicitous in style, though not without its mannerisms, but imbued with the saving grace of personality.

NEW NOVEL.

Roddles. By B. Paul Neuman. (John Murray.)

MR. NEUMAN has written another notable novel, which has no other continuity with his previous work than that provided by fellows. an entirely wholesome sympathy with his

The characters stand alone, by their own inherent vitality, without any of the verbal explanatory props so free himself of the seeming cloak of arronecessary to the average fiction-maker.

For once the well-intentioned critic can

gance and take the part of appreciator, trying to show more clearly the reflection of light from the many facets presented to view. Artistry is here from the very title, which centres our attention once and for all on the chief character-though intermittently Roddles may appear to have no more to do with the tale than others. It is Roddles, the little drunken tailor whom we think of when away from the book-Roddles, the individualist who, acknowledging his own responsibility to society for his offspring, sees no sponsibilities involved by his own existence- -Roddles, who shows the first joint in his armour of self-sufficiency by failing to thunder forth his lack of faith in the spiritual when his stricken boy fearfully

re

asks for confirmation of his father's disbelief.

We can permit ourselves the pleasure of only one quotation, that in which Roddles sums up for his friend's benefit his life's philosophy :

There, there, he left the first sentence unfinished, when a man 'as blasted luck all 'is life, it's no good whining about it. There's luck, there's no luck, and there's blasted luck. They 've got luck, you've got no luck, and I 've got the rest.'

If the middle of the book is the less entrancing, it is merely a case of partially suspended animation while we watch the fulfilment of the father's training of his offspring, softened as it is by contact with womanhood. womanhood. The lessening of tension. also serves to add poignancy to the dénouement-the conversion of Roddles and his Jonathan, a broken-down lawwriter, through the instrumentality of a Salvation Army girl. The reader need not fear sermonizing-there is none; but there is a true exposition of the selfevident failure of lives whose only aim is an exclusively materialistic success.

TRAVEL AND TOPOGRAPHY.

ENGLAND.

MR. IAN HANNAH'S book on The Sussex Coast in "The County Coast Series " (Fisher Unwin)-may be heartily recommended to all lovers of Sussex, as well as, in general, all lovers of antiquities. It makes a guide-book of much more than ordinary value; it contains enough information to serve as an adequate book of reference for ordinary purposes; and it is calculated to form an excellent starting-point for any one taking up local archæology as a hobby. Every church in the tiny, almost forsaken villages beside the inconsequent little streams which run down to the sea from the Downs is most carefully described; nor will the wanderer who follows this book miss any house, or fragment of a house, of antiquarian importance within some fifteen miles of the shore between Chichester and Rye. As is promised in the preface, the historical and literary interest predominates over the topographical, and one feels oneself, as one reads, journeying about ancient Sussex rather than about the banal region which we and our fathers have made of so much of the coast to-day. Indeed, Mr. Hannah might well have been more severe than he is upon the depressing hideousness of the works of modern man, as seen, say, from the west end of Worthing to the east of Brighton.

From St. Wilfrid to Blake-nay, in less detail, to Burne-Jones and Mr. Rudyard Kipling the men of note who have played any of their parts on the coast of Sussex are brought up before us in a sufficiently pleasing pageant. The warriors and the administrators fare, on the whole, better than the literary characters-the pages on Blake, for example, are far from happy and better also than the ecclesiastics; while those who come off best are the scarce-known or unnamed townsmen, villagers, and fisherfolk, of whom the author tells us more than one good story. Nor has he forgotten the three or four local trades: the needlemaking at Chichester; the trug at Hurstmonceaux; and the sheep-crooks of Pyecombe.

us.

His accounts of the older towns, Chichester, Lewes, Newhaven, Battle, and especially Winchelsea and Rye, are full and satisfactory, though we should have been glad of a better picture of Chichester Cathedral than the view of a drive and some trees with a spire behind them, which is all that is vouchsafed In general the choice of the photographs strikes us as capricious. Some are good, but others-e.g., those of the interior of Winchelsea Church-are decidedly poor. We imagine that this is partly due to the desire to avoid giving hackneyed views. On the other hand, most of Miss Edith Hannah's little drawings at the head of the chapters are successful, and we have no doubt that her water-colour drawing of Beachy Head in a fog is in itself beautiful, though it has suffered a good deal in reproduction.

There are at least two other elements of interest in the county apart from memories and survivals of old Sussex folks, their customs, habitations, and churches. One is Brighton; the other is the land itself, apart from the human inhabitants thereof. Mr. Hannah deals with both; but in neither case do we think he has expressed even so much of their inner secret as a work like this might have held. The chapter on 'Brighton-while there are but few omissions to remark-is almost pure

66

book" ; that on the Sussex Downs' is oddly prosy; while the occasional notes on landscape elsewhere lack the vivifying touch. To some degree the latter defect might have been overcome by a closer attention to the style, which is so loose and rambling that it frequently defeats the writer's best attempts at vivacity. In so far as this is the case it might be remedied without much trouble by revision in a later edition.

In Off the Beaten Track in Sussex: Sketches, Literary and Artistic (Hove, Combridge), Mr. Arthur Stanley Cooke has made a book which will delight all true men of the county. These pages represent artistic and literary impressions of nearly two score rambles. The descriptive text is lively and adequate, but the 160 illustrations by Sussex artists, all reproduced from original black-and-white drawings, are the real feature of the book. The author himself contributes some 40 of them, Mr. Arthur Packham nearly as many more, and the rest are the work of members of the Brighton Arts Club. These illustrations are very pleasing, and make the largest collection of Sussex views published in any book we are aware of. From Brighton as a centre Mr. Cooke has rambled both East and West. So much has been written on Sussex within recent years that many of the tags are becoming stale, among them Mr. Kipling's "dim blue goodness of the Weald.' The style is good except for a few The lapses from grammatical English. author can turn a pretty set of verses, witness his stanzas on harebells. It is implied that the promontory fortress of Burpham is due to the Romans; surely it is prehistoric.

Selsey Bill Historic and Prehistoric. By Edward Heron-Allen. (Duckworth.) By his wide attainments Mr. E. Heron-Allen is exceptionally well qualified to deal with the prehistoric and historic aspects of the district in which he lives. Historically and geologically Selsey Bill is very interesting, and has captivated the reviewer like others of the comparatively few visitors who for several summers in succession have trusted themselves to the tender mercies of the tramway which dallies between Chichester and Selsey village. The sea has from time to time played wanton tricks with the island of Selsey; and at the present time, owing to an irruption, in December, 1910, of the sea into Pagham Harbour (which for some 40 years had been reclaimed for pasture), the very existence of the Selsey promontory seems to have become precarious. It is difficult to realize that a few hundred years ago Selsey Bill ran out sharply into the sea and resisted the breakers with bluff cliffs; yet, on the other hand, the student of fossils or of coast erosion could nowhere see these subjects better demonstrated than along by Thorney Farm and West Wittering, west of the Bill. This time the sea has forced an entrance to Pagham (formerly Selsey) Harbour at the west, instead of (as before) at the east end of the great shingle bank, and the breach that after the first attack was a few yards wide has now been multiplied in width many fold.

On manorial statistics and genealogy from the time of William the Conqueror, the late rector of the parish, the Rev. John CavisBrown, had intended to write; but death interrupted his plans, and the store of documents handed to the author by his widow is too great to be fairly handled in the present volume. The story begins with the cutting of the English Channel, and is carried on to the present day, almost every relevant guide-department of science and history being

included in the survey; and as, in spite of the width of his knowledge, omniscience is not one of the author's foibles, he has properly called in such experts as Mr. Salzmann, Mr. Reginald Smith, and Mr. Clement Reid to check his conclusions in their several provinces. It is not a little surprising that any one man can write with such intimacy on so many subjects as the author of this sumptuously furnished volume. The discovery (p. 119) in Chichester Cathedral in 1891 of a long-lost Anglo-Saxon charter of Oslac (A.D. 780) is significant evidence of the need for antiquaries thoroughly to examine their own immediate surroundings.

The "Flower of Gloster." By E. Temple Thurston. (Williams & Norgate.)-It is not a very common way of taking a holiday to hire a canal barge, its horse and man, and go up and down the most secluded waterways. This is what Mr. Thurston has done and written about. But his is no guide-book: he is horrified at such things; so he gives no hints about the practice of his art, and is not too accurate concerning the places he has seen. Thus he is rightly proud of taking us through Warwick without a word on its history, and there is only one recollection he will " always keep" of Stratford-on-Avon :

"It is of a lady dressed in white, seated in a pure-white gondola, propelled on the waters of the Avon by a gondolier all clothed in the same colour of original simplicity. Whenever I hear of Stratford, I think of that.

But he gives us (through his artist) an unrecognizable Wormleighton, and slips over the date of Abbot's Salford, placing nuns there, too, centuries before they ever entered the house. Disquisition, not description, is what pleases Mr. Thurston : he follows George Borrow, somewhat too readily, for he has hardly the true wanderer's touch. The journey from Cropredy to Warwick by canal is a stirring one, placid and long drawn-out only in seeming. Three times you circle the height of Wormleighton, and so you may think of Rupert dining there the night before Edgehill, in that now dismantled Star-Chamber; see Edgecote, where the royal standard floated; think of Charles calling Shuckburgh from his hounds, and read tombstones to one and another "faithful soldier of King Charles ye First." But not all these things will Mr. Thurston know of, or if he knows tell. On again you may go that quiet way by Baddesley Clinton: Mr. Thurston never mentions it, though he was at Lapworth and Knowle and Solihull, a very short distance away. But he does tell one of the six locks at Knowle, up which we climbed wearily, a height, it must have been, of over a hundred feet before we reached the top "; and of all the horrors of the canal beyond Knowle, by Solihull, and its contents. Perhaps the most charming part of the book is the passage describing how the party left the barge behind for a while and trudged over the road from Stratford to Tewkesbury, pausing only at places which specially please the wayfarer, at Bidford (though Mr. Thurston says hard words there) and Salford, Eckington and Fladbury: Fladbury, which deserves all the enthusiasm it wins, whether from the house on the hill which looks across to other hills; from the rectory, once the richest in the shire, with its terrace above the river; or from the mill below with its beautiful pool. These are things Mr. Thurston sees and knows how to tell of, and they go far to make one happy with his book. But it would have been even more delightful if he had told us more of what he saw and less of what he said, including the language with which he and his bargee (a very nice fellow) garnished their conversation.

Mr. Dakin's pictures parallel the quality of Mr. Thurston's prose. The coloured ones are charming, the black-and-white are sometimes exceedingly good (as on p. 127) and sometimes as surprisingly bad. A writer and an artist who can sometimes do so well ought always to do well, one feels.

Memorials of Old Gloucestershire (George Allen), edited by the Rev. P. H. Ditchfield, is a volume which is of interest, but is incomplete. "Memorials" is a word vague enough to include anything, but we fail to understand the principle on which the various contributors have worked. Dr. Cox is responsible for a chapter on the Forest of Dean, and he tells us that it is foreign to the purpose of his essay to enter into the question of the administration of the Forest. But an account of that district which omits to mention the Speech House, where the Freeminers hold their ancient Court, and gives no information about the laws of the Freeminers, cannot be considered satisfactory. There are 25 pages on Chatterton, and a good deal about Bristol Cathedral; but Gloucester Cathedral has apparently been forgotten, though the work has been copiously illustrated. We note that Sir Francis Drake is named, but that Sir Walter Raleigh is omitted. Houses in which, local tradition says, they lived are still standing and are close together. There is an interesting chapter by Canon Carbonel on the famous glass at Fairford; but, though Mr. Ditchfield goes out of his way to say that the glass came from the Netherlands, his contributor is allowed to give an account which is inconsistent with the editor's words. The article on the Norman Doorways of Gloucestershire' is valuable, and the many photographs of these add to the usefulness of the book. We are sorry that there is no map of the county in the volume; but there is a good Index, in which we have noted only one mistake.

NORTHERN REGIONS.

To those caught in the tangled net of an artificial civilization there can be no greater refreshment than the Real. Next best to the Real itself is a sympathetic account of a people living in close touch with Nature. Such an account Dr. S. K. Hutton has given us in his interesting book Among the Eskimos of Labrador (Seeley, Service & Co.). Prof. Sollas tells us that these Eskimos are the modern, though degenerate, representatives of the prehistoric Magdalenian folk, who lived, wandered, and worked in Europe during the last glacial epoch, and whose implements, drawings, and carvings, recovered to-day in caves, bear witness to their artistic ideas and powers of expression. With the retreat of the ice northwards there followed necessarily the retreat of these Magdalenians, who live again in the Eskimos.

Dr. Hutton emphasizes the importance of recognizing that the Eskimo temperament and native genius depend for their very existence on a rigid adherence to the special environment and ancient traditions of the

race:

"The life of a hunter is the ideal life for an Eskimo. It is the life he is especially gifted for; the raw [seal's] meat he eats keeps him fit and well. In the north the people are broad and plump, with flat faces and sunken noses; but further south....lean, sharp-faced, bony limbs, pointed noses....though pure-blooded Eskimos. ...The cause of the change lies in the altered food and habits of the people....They take to

garments of cloth instead of seal-skin ;. .they eat less of raw meat and blubber, and more of bread, tea, and cooked meats of the settlersand Nature rebels. The Southern Eskimos are less hardy, they cannot bear the cold so well, but need more fire, more clothing, and more warm food, and their children are puny....If they give up their native foods they will dwindle and die out."

We entirely agree with him, and are therefore the more surprised to find that he approves of the introduction among them of European foods, such as tea, bread, bacon; of wooden, linoleum-covered floors; of bedsteads, sofas, and even gramophones; and, yet stranger to relate, glass windows on hinges.

66

It is sad to read that their winter houses are dark and noisome," and that the art of carving is disappearing. Dr. Rink was one of the first travellers to give Western Europeans some idea of the Eskimos at home. His book is illustrated by the clever drawings of a native who shows the winter by no means to be despised. house to have been well constructed, and

The following is also illuminating :

"The summer of 1904 saw the hospital....in full going order, for among the many things that the Harmony brought were the bedsteads and bedding for the wards. Our servant a bright and active Eskimo girl of eighteen....touched my arm....and said, 'What are they?'.... Why, these are the bedsteads.' 'Bedsteads ? -this with a puzzled air. Ahaila, beds for the sick people.' sick people; old Emilia is the only person in bed, Sôgle (but why)?-there are no and she is not sick, only old.'

"I tried [says Dr. Hutton] to explain to her that these bedsteads were to be....in readiness for any possible sick persons during the future. "Ai, ai,' she said, there are going to be sick people ? Who will it be?'"

We are still wondering what bedsteads and hospital wards have to do with Eskimo hunters, and also whether Dr. Hutton has forgotten the subtle influence of suggestion. The women as the following instance may show :— are extraordinarily skilful,

about a thousand miles of the coast of Greenland entirely from memory, and as accurately as that drawn by the Admiralty Survey. The introduction of an English system of education seems strangely out of place among a people whose memories are so well developed. Memory and eyesight will be weakened by too great a dependence on books.

The author ends his interesting narrative by telling us that the policy of the missionaries has been "to make the Eskimo a better Eskimo." To us it would rather appear from his account that we ourselves have something to learn from this prehistoric people in the way of common sense, as well as in methods of education and government. Dr. Wallace felt the same about the forestdwellers of the Malay Archipelago, and he pointed out many ways in which the English would be made better English if they would learn from Nature's children.

The photographs which serve as illustrations are excellent, but we regret that the subject-matter is not better arranged, and also that the map is not referred to in the text.

Hunters and Hunting in the Arctic. By the Duke of Orleans. Translated by H. Grahame Richards. (Nutt.)-In four recent summers the Duke of Orleans has made voyages in Arctic waters-the last three in He might, indeed, almost be styled a seasoned his steam-yacht Belgica of Antarctic fame. Arctic explorer, if he had not managed, through skill or good fortune, or a combination of them, to avoid passing a winter in those regions. In 1905 he succeeded in reaching the highest latitude till then attained on the shores of East Greenland, and in adding to the map a stretch of coastline (surveyed only from the ship), besides a group of islets, named by him Isles de France," which figure variously (and rather absurdly) in this book as the French Islands and "French Land." Of this expedition, and of the succeeding one in 1907, he has published narratives in diary form, which have not been translated into English; and in the present volume he has brought together the hunting experiences of his four voyages under the headings

of

"Be wise in time, and wear Eskimo clothes,' was the advice of a missionary, who said he would arrange matters for me; accordingly the village tailor,' a square faced, brisk little Eskimo woman, came in one day like a miniature hurricane. There was no awe, no aloofness about her. .she stood me up, and looked at me, and measured me with her arms, and walked out satisfied. 6 'A bit taller than my husband, and not so fat was her comment; and the outcome of it all was that after a few days she turned up again with a big bundle, and I found myself the possessor of a dicky' (blanket smock) and a complete suit of seal skins....and all for the outlay of a modest sum....for the good woman's excellent needlework.”

concerning the moral excellences of the The author has a good deal to relate Eskimos. Thus he tells us :

"The Drink Evil began in 1907. Several men got drunk. The elders called a meeting of the men. This new habit is bad,' they said; 'it will ruin the people; let us cast it out.' "And cast it out they did.

"Kajusimavit,' they said, the mind of the People is made up the brewing and drinking must cease.' The evil was abolished; and so

by their own wish the Eskimos became what they

had always been, a teetotal nation."

As is well known, this people have no prisons and no police, serious crime being virtually non-existent, while in their daily life they show themselves kindly, courageous, and capable, when need arises, of supreme selfsacrifice.

The eyesight of the Eskimo is at present very keen, and he is an excellent shot. The fact that he finds our guns require "mending," i.e., straightening, before he

uses

them affords food for reflection. Galton again, in 'Human Faculties,' narrates how an Eskimo trapper drew a map of

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Trappers,''Bears and their Cubs,' Reindeer,' The Walrus and Seals.' The habits of the animals indicated are by this time familiar to readers of Arctic travel-books ; and the Duke has wisely refrained from padding his pages with zoological details, preferring to extract from his diaries the record of his own sporting adventures. This system, or want of system, renders his book far more graphic and readable, but has the effect of jumbling together in puzzling fashion the occurrences of different years-e.g., on pp. 180 and 191 the same sealhunt is variously stated to have happened in 1905 and 1909. In the latter summer the Duke was lucky enough to be able to visit East Greenland, West Spitzbergen, and Franz-Josef Land in a single season, without being seriously beset by ice; and his Arctic experience has been confined to those regions and the Kara Sea, where he was less fortunate. On reaching the limit of exploration there in 1905, he was mortified to find a Norwegian sealer already possession"; and three degrees further south in 1909, his dreams of a musk-ox hunt were amusingly dispelled by the presence of winter trappers of the same enterprising nation.

in

The Duke was able to bring three captive cubs of Polar bears alive to Europe, one of which he attempted to domesticate at Wood Norton ; he remarks, however, that it always remained savage and dangerous.