1 2 2 THE NA TURE-STUD Y RE VIE W [3 : 4_apk., ,907 



first depicted self-satisfied in the consciousness that he had duly **encouraged" 

 every ''practical" study — **save, perhaps, that of childhood itself" — **ot 

 course, outside of mere sentimental interest, mere evolutionary dreams — say 

 of **lilies how they grow." 



Then after ten or twelve pages of such suggestive banter, he finally con- 

 cludes: 



**As amid our politics, religious controversies, and education enactments, 

 realities of education again disclose themselves; we again see now and then a 

 little child in the midst; and the hope is not perhaps wholly Utopian, that 

 even those respectively inheriting the watchwords of ''science" and "relig- 

 ion" may be able to unite in such an exegesis as that a certain passage of the 

 child's reading not only says "consider" — "the lilies" — "how they" — 

 ''grow," — but means that. 



"Meantime, however, may we not allow our own schoolmistress and her 

 children to proceed to the reclamation of the administrative desert of our 

 particular school-yard? Each oasis, once begun, may grow; some day they 

 may even meet." 



Another fundamental thought is that garden work docs so much for the 

 child because it has in the past done so much for the race. It has been basal 

 to the evolution of civilized life. This crops out in the closing words of the 

 preface and finally appears in the last words of the book: "Life calls — and 

 responds — to life; and with prophetic insight the pioneers of gardening in its 

 highest and best sense see in this pure and healthy occupation the beginning 

 of a newer and better order of things for all mankind — 

 "The freedom and divinity of man. 

 The glorious claims of human brotherhood." 



We are not surprised to learn that the book is already being translated into 

 Danish and Italian. 



C. F. Hodge. 



The Log of the Sun. A Chronicle of Nature's Year. By C. W. Beebe. 

 New York: Holt. 1906, pp. 345, 52 full page plates. $6.00. 



This new book by the Curator of Ornithology in the New York Zoologi- 

 cal Park and author of the excellent book on birds -which was reviewed in this 

 magazine in January, consists of fifty-two short essays on "familiar subjects 

 from unusual points of view." "Emphasis has been laid upon the weak 

 points in our knowledge of things about us, and the principal desire of the 

 author is to inspire enthusiasm in those whose eyes are just opening to the 

 wild beauties of God's out-of-doors." 



Many of the essays are intensely interesting. As might be expected from the 



