I goo] Book Notice. 35 



Gleanings from Nature. By W. S. Blatchley. 8vo. Indian- 

 apolis, 1899. 



Elementary books of g"eneral natural history dealing in a 

 scientifically accurate but popular way with common objects of 

 the country are by far too few. The general statement may be 

 made that everone is largely interested in natural history, although 

 many do not know it until an accidental occurrence turns their 

 attention to something which forms a stepping-stone into the 

 wondrous fairyland in which the naturalist lives. 



Professor Blatchley has recently published some of his 

 '•Gleanings from nature" in a well printed, particularly well illus- 

 trated, neat volume of 350 pages. This book is based upon 

 extensive observations made directly from nature in the woods 

 and fields of Indiana, and is an effort, and a most successful 

 one, to present, in language that all can understand, primarily, 

 to the 800,000 boys and girls on the farms of 

 Indiana to whom it is dedicated, facts concerning 

 some of the commoner plants and animals which are our friends, 

 our helpers and our neighbors in the country. The first chapter 

 is appropriately entitled Harbingers of Spring. The chapters are, 

 for the most part, short and are crisply written, showing that the 

 matter presented has been gathered by the writer from his own 

 observations and gives the idea that he knew more about the sub- 

 jects treated of than it was convenient to write about in the pres- 

 ent volume. Prof. Blatchley has made a special study of several 

 branches of natural history. These, as might be expected, are 

 treated of at rather greater length than other.*-. It may be thought 

 by some who do not live in the Hoosier State that an undue space 

 is given to the Indiana caves, but it must be remembered that 

 these are of special interest to those for whom the book was writ- 

 ten, and others will be well repaid a perusal of Gleanings from 

 Nature by several other chapters on subjects seldom written about: 

 The chapters on Snakes, Birds, and Katydids and their Kin, are 

 specially attractive. Twelve Winter Birds and Plants and Ani- 

 mals in Winter, will be read with pleasure by all whether natural- 

 ists or not. 



Two or three of the illustrations are particularly beautiful. 



