6 Massachusetts Audubon Society 



BOOK REVIEWS 



The Burgess Animal Book for Children, by Thornton W. Burgess, 

 author of "The Burgess Bird Book for Children." With 32 full-page 

 illustrations in color and 16 full-page illustrations in black-and- 

 white from drawings by Louis Agassiz Fuertes. Crown 8vo. Deco- 

 rated Cloth. $3.00 (For boys and girls, 4 to 12.) 

 This is a companion volume to "The Burgess Bird Book for Children," 

 which has had such a wonderful reception since its publication a year ago. 

 It is written in the same vein, a story book which at the same time is an 

 authoritative handbook on the land animals of America, so describing them 

 and their habits that they will be instantly recognized when seen. Every 

 child and not a few adults will delight in going to school to Old Mother 

 Nature with Peter Rabbit and his friends. 



The book is beautifully illustrated by Mr. Fuertes, the naturalist-artist, 

 whose drawings are living portraits and show the big and little people of 

 the Green Forest and the Green Meadows, the Smiling Pool and the Great 

 Mountains, as they actually are amid home surroundings. 

 Everyday Adventures by Samuel Scoville, Jr., The Atlantic Monthly Press, 

 Boston, Mass. Price $3.00. 

 The adventures are those of a city-dweller who goes into the fields and 

 woods near by to seek them. With a wonderful sense of the beauties of 

 nature, it has a charming faculty in description which would exalt the trivial 

 and make the commonplace delightful to any reader. But, after all, his 

 adventures are neither trivial nor commonplace. Some of them are excit- 

 ing and dangerous enough, as when he finds the raven nesting in Pennsyl- 

 vania and tells how he climbs icy crags at the peril of his life to look into 

 the nest. Again his orchid hunting is filled with the pure joy of finding 

 rare and beautiful flowers in lonely places. In this he finds no mean 

 adventures, as witness the following: — "I set my teeth, gripped the rough, 

 cold, scaly body just back of the crotched stick, and lifted. The great 

 snake's black, fixed, devilish eyes looked into mine. If, in this world, there 

 are peep-holes into hell, they are found in the eyes of an enraged rattle- 

 snake. As he came clear of the ground, he coiled around my arm to the 

 elbow, so that the rattles sounded not a foot from my ear. Although the 

 rattlesnake is not a constrictor, and there was no real danger, yet under 

 the touch of his body my arm quivered like a tuning fork." What he did 

 with this rattlesnake which he picked up while orchid hunting is one of 

 his everyday adventures about which you should read. 



THE LOYAL EAGLE 



Lorain, Ohio, Nov. 5. — It's going to be a lonely winter for the bald 

 eagle whose nest is situated near Oak Point, a few miles west of here. For 

 years he and his mate had made their home in a stretch of timber land 

 near the point where they reared their young. The young eagles as soon 

 as they could fly left the place but the parents always remained. Farmers in 

 the vicinity never molested the birds. They were considered as pets. 

 Then a short time ago tragedy entered into the eagle abode. A hunter 

 mistook Mrs. Eagle for a hawk and killed her. For several days, farmers 

 say, the father bird refused to leave the spot where his mate was killed. The 

 eagle inhabits his old nest, residents say, but makes a daily pilgrimage to 

 the spot where his loved one fell. (From the Cleveland Plain Dealer) 



