36 NATURE-STUDY REVIEW [11:1— Jan., 1915 



of the United States, defines their limits, and gives brief descrip- 

 tions of the characteristic trees. 



The book is abundantly illustrated with excellent pictures prac- 

 tically all of which appear for the first time. The book is very 

 readable, for the style is simple and the person with only casual 

 interest in our forests will enjoy the book. It presents one of our 

 great national problems in a very attractive way. 



The Book of Monsters. David and Marian Fairchild. 266 pp. 

 National Geographic Society. 



This is a book of pictures with a page or so of descriptive text 

 accompanying each plate . The monsters are the spiders and insects 

 of our back yard, but the pictures are taken with a very long focus 

 camera, so that a very great enlargement has been achieved ; familiar 

 friends are portrayed in gigantic proportions that are almost 

 alarming. The pictures show up the details in a surprising way; 

 the mouth parts on flies and beetles are given with almost diagram - 

 atic distinctness: one can hardly realize that the picture is an actual 

 photograph. The picture of the wolf spider shows the fangs and 

 the eyes as if seen under a microscope. The king grasshopper on 

 page 54 is a startling revelation. The photograph of the hearing 

 organs of the grasshopper on page 64 gives detail with great dis- 

 tinctness; similar organs are shown in the katy-did on page 68. 

 The dragonfly feeding on a fly, shown on page 194, is exceedingly 

 good as are also the two following illustrations of the nymph show- 

 ing the mask. Anyone who has undertaken insect photography 

 will realize what a degree of patience and skill has gone into the 

 making of this book. It certainly is a book that will go into the 

 nature library of the child revealing many wonderful things in 

 familiar animals. The pictures are as strange and uncanny as the 

 monsters drawn from the fertile imagination of the writer of fairy 

 tales. Very little text accompanies the pictures. Just enough 

 to tell briefly of the animal photographed 



The February number is to be a Special School Garden Num- 

 ber. The March number will be devoted to the outline of nature- 

 study in use in the Mankato (Minn.) Normal School. The April 

 number will be a Bird Number. More than 300 copies of the 

 special organization number, December, have been sent out on 

 extra orders. If you want extra copies of these special numbers 

 order early. 



